© Public Health of Indonesia – YCAB Publisher, Volume 3, Issue 2, April-June 2017 | Public Health of Indonesia Zaman SB, et al. Public Health of Indonesia. 2017 June;3(2):38-40 http://stikbar.org/ycabpublisher/index.php/PHI/index ISSN: 2477-1570 Perspective AN EXPLORATION OF THE FEASIBILITY OF INTRODUCING ROTA VACCINE INTO THE ROUTINE EPI SCHEDULE OF BANGLADESH Sojib Bin Zaman 1,2* , Naznin Hossain 3 , Asma Binte Aziz 1 , Kerlijn Van Assche 4 , Nitin Mittal 5 , Raihan Kabir Khan 6 , Rajat Das Gupta 7 1 International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), Dhaka, Bangladesh 2 Institute of Tropical Medicine and International Health, Charité –Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany 3 Department of Pharmacology, Dhaka Medical College, Bangladesh 4 Independent Researcher, Brussels, Belgium 5 MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, India 6 School of Public Health, West Virginia University, USA 7 James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Bangladesh Accepted: 14 April 2017 *Correspondence: Sojib Bin Zaman Maternal and Child Health Division International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) 68, Shahid Tajuddin Ahmed Sharani, Mohakhali, Dhaka -1212, Bangladesh Telephone: +8801717043257 E-mail : sojib@icddrb.org Copyright: © the author(s), YCAB publisher and Public Health of Indonesia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. INTRODUCTION Rota virus is the most common cause for Rotavirus-Induced Acute Gastroenteritis (RVGE) among the young infants in the developing countries. RVGE is a form of acute watery diarrhoea, which causes severe dehydration and ultimately can lead to death if untreated or poorly managed. 1 It is estimated that 2.4 million cases of rotavirus diarrhoea occur annually in Bangladesh among children under 5 following about 3000 deaths. At icddr,b hospital (a Bangladeshi research based international organization) about 40,000 hospitalizations occurs each year for RVGE that represents about 15% of community cases. Immunization against rotavirus can increase the infant survival to make a positive change in near future. World Health Organization (WHO) has already recommended the inclusion of Rotavirus (RV) vaccine in the routine immunization. Globally more than 130 countries have already licensed RV vaccine, and 80 have integrated the RV vaccine within National Immunization Programme (NIP). 2 Currently, there is no available RV vaccine under the NIP in Bangladesh. EXISTING TREATMENT STRATEGY OF ROTAVIRUS There is no particular treatment against rotavirus except supportive treatment which mostly focus on rehydration regimen. However, provision of intravenous fluid is not available in the rural facilities due to difficulty in performing intravenous cannulation. Antibiotics are not effective in treating viral diseases like Rota; rather clinicians depend on supportive treatment focusing 38