A newly recommended vaccine reduces the likelihood of ear infections in infants and young children, and protects them from more serious illness, experts say.

Friday, March 02, 2001

A newly recommended vaccine reduces the likelihood of ear infections in infants and young children, and protects them from more serious illness, experts say.

The Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians (MAFP) recently recommended parents inoculate all infants up to age two and children as old as five who attend day-care with pneumococcal vaccine to protect against pneumococcus bacteria.

Pneumococcus is a bacterium that can cause meningitis and blood infection, said public health nurse Anita Majerus. &uot;Not all ear infections are caused by it, but some of them are.&uot;

The pneumococcus bacterium causes about 200 deaths of children under five annually. It also causes about five million ear infections, 17,000 cases of blood infection and over 700 cases of meningitis every year, according to the United States Department of Health and Human Services. It has become resistant to many antibiotics.

&uot;It is only a rare cause of serious disease, but with its new resistance, it is on the rise and the diseases can be very difficult to treat,&uot; according to the MAFP.

The vaccine protects against seven common strains of pneumococcus bacteria that cause 80 percent of pneumococcal disease in children under age five, they said.

Public health has been administering the vaccine since last fall, Majerus said.

Children under 2 years old are at greatest risk for serious disease, Majerus said. All infants should receive injections at the following ages: 2 months, 4 months, 6 months and 12 to 15 months. This fits with the standard schedule for other immunizations. Children who miss the first dose at 2 months should still get the vaccine.

Children between 2 and 5 years old should receive the vaccine if they attend a day-care or have higher illness risks like sickle cell disease, HIV, asplenia (no spleen) or other chronic diseases, MAFP said. African-American, Alaskan Native and Native American children between 2 and 5 years old should also be vaccinated.

More information on vaccinations is available at the National Immunization Program’s Web site at http://www.cdc.gov/nip.