London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The results of a Medical Research Council (MRC) trial show that vaccinating infants against bacteria which causes deadly pneumonia could save up to a million lives a year.

In a massive four-year study, a team of MRC researchers, with colleagues from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), vaccinated and followed more than 17,000 young children in the Gambia to find out whether a vaccine shown to prevent deaths from the bacterium in the developed world would also be effective in rural Africa, where there is high childhood mortality and limited access to health care.

The results of the vaccination programme against pneumococcus - a bacterium which causes pneumonia, meningitis and infection of the bloodstream - showed a 16 percent reduction in the number of deaths among children who got the vaccination. This is the first major randomised, controlled vaccine trial in nearly 20 years to show a statistically significant reduction in overall child death.

The vaccine was found to be 77 percent effective in preventing infection from the bacterium - which led to 37 percent fewer cases of pneumonia. The results also have important implications for the limited healthcare resources available in the developing world as the vaccine was found to reduce hospital admissions by 15 percent.

Professor Felicity Cutts of the MRC, who led the study, said: "The trial demonstrates that pneumococcal vaccination can prevent these serious infections even in an African setting. This is great news for children and parents in rural areas everywhere."

Professor Brian Greenwood of LSHTM, former director of the MRC laboratories in the Gambia, added: "This is a very important study - one of the most important I have been involved in.

"More than 10 million children die in the developing world every year and we are talking here about potentially saving a million lives a year.

"This study shows the value of conducting long-term, high quality studies in the developing world.

"The MRC supporting these world sites can make a huge difference and it shows a long-term commitment can really pay off."

World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Dr Lee Jong-Wook said: "The results of this vaccine trial hold great promise for improving health and saving lives in resource-poor populations.

"The international community's task now is to continue to work together productively to make the pneumococcal vaccine widely available to children in Africa as lives are lost every minute to pneumococcal disease.

"Immunising children with pneumococcal disease will be a critical intervention towards achieving a two-thirds reduction in the under-five mortality rate, a Millennium Development Goal."

When pneumococcus bacteria invade the lungs, they can cause the most common kind of bacterial pneumonia. They can then invade the bloodstream or the tissues and fluids surrounding the brain and spinal cord to cause meningitis.

According to WHO, pneumococcal pneumonia and meningitis are responsible for about 1.6m deaths a year - even more than malaria. More than 90 percent of pneumococcal deaths in children occur in developing countries.

Other sponsors in the trial included WHO and the US Agency for International Development. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals provided the vaccine. The results of the study are published in this week's Lancet.