Advocacy group issues rotavirus handout

The Rotavirus Organization for Training and Advocacy in the Philippines (ROTAPhil) has finished the first volume of its handbook entitled Rotavirus Infection: What Doctors Need to Know.

This handbook aims to assist general practitioners, health care workers, and medical students in the care of infants and young children suffering from rotavirus diarrhea.

The handbook presents several important subjects regarding the control, management, and prevention of rotaviral diarrhea infection.

Topics such as epidemiology, clinical features and complications, pathogenesis, laboratory diagnosis, medical management and prevention through vaccination are sufficiently discussed in this first volume.

Rotavirus is currently the leading cause of severe diarrhea among children up to five years old. The Asian Rotavirus Surveillance Study conducted from 2001 to 2003 in nine countries showed that 43 percent of hospitalized children with diarrhea were infected by rotavirus.

With an estimated four to six million deaths a year, especially in developing countries like the Philippines, the Fourth Millennium Development Goal of the United Nations is directed toward the decrease of morbidity and mortality among infants and young children by two-thirds by the year 2015.

Taking its cue from the UN’s goal, ROTAPhil was established. Its chairwoman, Dr. Lulu Bravo, says, "The group aims to promote advocacy and training of health care personnel for the control and prevention of diarrhea, with emphasis on rotaviral infection."

Bravo has been consistently involved in national and international training, research, and advocacy in various aspects of diarrhea. She is currently the vice chancellor for research and executive director of the National Institutes of Health of the University of the Philippines Manila.

Other members who contributed to the handbook include the following:

• Dr. Juliet Sio-Aguilar, professor of pediatrics of UP-Manila College of Medicine and chief of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at the PGH and St. Luke’s Medical Center;

• Dr. Celia Carlos, head of the Diarrheal Disease Research Group at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), head of pediatric infectious diseases at St. Luke’s, head of the Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Program of the Department of Health, and principal investigator of the Rotavirus Surveillance Project in the Philippines;

• Dr. Salvacion Gatchalian, clinical associate professor of pediatrics at UP-Manila College of Medicine, officer-in-charge for Infectious and Tropical Disease Section of the Department of Pediatrics of PGH, and director for clinical R&D medical affairs, biologicals of GSK;

• Dr. Felizardo Gatcheco, assistant professor of Pediatrics Head of the Research Development Office at the Manila Central University, Filemon D. Tanchoco Medical Foundation, and medical specialist at the Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center;

• Dr. Ma. Lourdes Genuino, associate professor of physiology at UP-Manila College of Medicine and consultant in pediatrics at Philippine General Hospital;

• Dr. Jossie Rogacion, associate professor of pediatrics at UP-Manila College of Medicine, and consultant of pediatric gastroenterology at PGH; and

• Dr. Eric Tayag, officer-in-charge (director IV) of the DOH’s National Epidemiology Center, and president of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination.

At present, ROTAPhil says there is no specific antiviral treatment available to cure rotavirus infection. Sanitation and hygiene also do not help reduce susceptibility to rotavirus.

Although rehydration therapy can help reduce symptoms, a more effective preventive measure against rotavirus is still vaccination.