National Immunization Campaigns With Oral Polio Vaccine May Reduce All-cause Mortality: An Analysis of 13 Years of Demographic Surveillance Data From an Urban African Area. (19th September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Andersen, Andreas; Fisker, Ane Bærent; Nielsen, Sebastian; Rodrigues, Amabelia; Benn, Christine Stabell; Aaby, Peter
• Is Part Of: Clinical infectious diseases. Volume 72:Number 10(2021)
• Page Start: e596
• Page End: e603
• Publication Date: 2020-09-19
• Subjects: campaigns -- eradication -- OPV -- oral polio vaccine -- nonspecific/heterologous effects of vaccines; Communicable diseases -- Periodicals; 616.905
• DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciaa1351
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1058-4838

Abstract

Abstract: Background: Between 2002 and 2014, Guinea-Bissau had 17 national campaigns with oral polio vaccine (OPV) as well as campaigns with vitamin A supplementation (VAS), measles vaccine (MV), and H1N1 influenza vaccine. We examined the impact of these campaigns on child survival. Methods: We examined the mortality rate between 1 day and 3 years of age of all children in the study area. We used Cox models with age as underlying time to calculate adjusted mortality rate ratios (MRRs) between "after-campaign" mortality and "before-campaign" mortality, adjusted for temporal change in mortality and stratified for season at risk. Results: Mortality was lower after OPV-only campaigns than before, with an MRR for after-campaign vs before-campaign being 0.75 (95% confidence interval [CI], .67–.85). Other campaigns did not have similar effects, the MRR being 1.22 (95% CI, 1.04–1.44) for OPV + VAS campaigns, 1.39 (95% CI, 1.20–1.61) for VAS-only campaigns, 1.32 (95% CI, 1.09–1.60) for MV + VAS campaigns, and 1.13 (95% CI, .86–1.49) for the H1N1 campaign. Thus, all other campaigns differed significantly from the effect of OPV-only campaigns. Effects did not differ for trivalent, bivalent, or monovalent strains of OPV. With each additional campaign of OPV only, the mortality rate declined further (MRR, 0.86 [95% CI, .81–.92] per campaign). With follow-up to 3 years of age, the number needed to treat to save 1 life with the OPV-only campaign was 50 neonates. Conclusions: OPV campaigns can have a much larger effect on child survival than otherwise assumed. Stopping OPV campaigns in low-income countries as part of the endgame for polio infection may increase child mortality. Abstract : The mortality rate was 25% lower after oral polio vaccine (OPV)–only campaigns than before campaigns. There was no beneficial effect of other campaigns, and the effect of OPV-only campaigns differed significantly from the effects of all other campaigns.