More kids get measles vaccine in Jap... 
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More kids get measles vaccine
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=feature&id=638
TOKYO — Japan began a campaign to get more kids vaccinated against the measles in 2001 because it seriously lags behind many other nations in dealing with the disease.
The campaign's slogan is called "Let's give measles vaccine to 1-year-old babies as a birthday present." Measles kills 750,000 people worldwide annually.
In Japan about 100,000 to 200,000 are infected every year, and 20 to 30 people die. This is much higher than in other advanced countries that have aggressive vaccination programs such as the United States, which reports around 100 cases a year and few deaths.
"In 2000, 45% of 1-year-old babies, who are most likely to get measles, were vaccinated, but the percentage rose to 78% in 2002," said Keiko Taya, a section chief of the Infectious Disease Surveillance Center at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.
She said that in 2001, only 44% of 1-year-old babies had the antibody, but that percentage rose to 73% a year later, and in 2003, the number patients dropped to one-fourth that of two years earlier.
A vaccination rate of 95% is required to control the disease and Taya believes that Japan will soon approach that figure.
The key is making it easier to get vaccinations. Currently, appointments are necessary even though many parents want it on demand.
According to Takehiro Togashi, director of Municipal Sapporo Hospital, the rate of vaccination for 1-and a-half-year-olds was 83% and that for 3-year-olds was 94% in Hokkaido in fiscal 2002, while the percentages were 87% and 96% in Sapporo.
More kids are getting vaccinated because hospitals are distributing reminder stickers to parents so that they can mark the vaccination dates on their calendars.
"We want to wipe out the disease in Hokkaido in two years," Togashi said.
The World Health Organization classifies countries into three types — those that need to control the disease, those that need to prevent mass outbreaks and those that have almost eradicated it.
More than 100 countries, including the U.S, belong to the last group, but Japan belongs to the first one.
The vaccination rate in the U.S. is more than 95% and American children cannot enter school unless they are vaccinated.
But despite the nationwide campaign in Japan, mass outbreaks are commonplace and many adults contract it.
From May to July of last year, mass outbreaks occurred at primary and junior high schools in Miyazaki Prefecture. Two-thirds of the 400 children infected with the disease had not been vaccinated.
Students at 15 of the nation's medical schools contracted the disease last year, according to the Japan Pediatrics Association.
At Kagoshima University, about 60 students at its medical school were infected last June.
"It was considered that vaccinations were effective during a lifetime, but immunity gradually decreases, and there are people who never become immune even after being vaccinated," said Nobuhiko Okabe, chief of the Infectious Disease Surveillance Center.
Japan is the only industrialized country that does not vaccinate twice. In the U.S. the first shot is given around 18 months and the second around 3 to 4 years.
Some experts in Japan call for introducing this system.
Every year there are about 50 reports of side-effects from the vaccine.
Okabe said that gelatin, which used to be used a preservative, can cause allergies. "But the dangers of the disease far outweigh the side-effects of the vaccine." (Kyodo News)
May 14, 2004
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=feature&id=638
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Public needs more data on vaccine side effects
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/archive/200303/17/20030317p2a00m0oa020000c.html
The Osaka District Court found Osaka University's Research Institute for Microbial Diseases and the central government guilty of negligence last Thursday, and ordered both parties to pay compensation to the families of a child who died, and a child who suffered serious side effects from measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccinations.
The culpability of the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, which manufactured the mumps vaccine used in the MMR injections, is indisputable, because it produced the vaccine using a process different from the one for which it had received government approval.
The court ruled that it is possible to establish a causal relationship between the side effects suffered by those who had been immunized with the MMR vaccinations, and changes made in the manufacturing process.
The defective MMR vaccinations had been used over a four-year period, causing serious side effects, and 1,065 people were provided with relief under the preventive vaccination law. The court ruled that there was a lack of commitment to the approved manufacturing process at both the research institute and manufacturing plant. The research institute must instill a safety-first attitude and take every step to ensure that side effects are eliminated.
And we hope that this verdict will prompt other pharmaceutical makers to recheck their safety procedures. The central government's oversight of the Osaka research institute was also called into question.
The central government plays the lead role in implementing vaccination programs to protect society as a whole, so its supervisory responsibilities with regard to vaccinations are even greater than in the case of ordinary pharmaceuticals. The court ruled that the government was not obligated to halt the manufacturing of the vaccines.
But at the very moment that it learned that the vaccines had a high side effects rate, the government preferably should have imposed a temporary ban. When a pharmaceutical product causes side effects which could prove lethal to large numbers of people, it is only proper to stop administering or prescribing the product, and to take a second look at safety issues.
In this case, delays in reaching a decision to ban the vaccine magnified the number of victims. In the 1970s, victims of defective vaccines and their family members filed a spate of lawsuits, and these trials dragged on into the 1990s. The courts frequently ordered the government to compensate victims because it had not taken adequate measures to protect the public.
But it took the Osaka District Court nearly 10 years to issue its verdict in this MMR case. The courts need to make an effort to speed up trials. After the revision of the preventive vaccination law in 1994, vaccines were administered on a voluntary instead of mandatory basis.
The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, and the various prefectural governments need to disseminate more information on side effects and provide counseling so that people will be able to make an informed decision on vaccinations. Immunization programs will not be effective unless sufficient information is provided to the public.
The same lessons apply to the administration of pharmaceuticals. The lack of publicity about the side effects associated with Iressa, a lung cancer drug, for example, has caused suffering in large numbers of patients.
The central government and drug manufacturers need to provide the public with more information in order to reduce the extent of damages caused by defective vaccines and pharmaceuticals. (From the Mainichi Shimbun, Mar. 16)
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/archive/200303/17/20030317p2a00m0oa020000c.html
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