PneumoADIP is happy to announce the re-launch of www.preventpneumo.org. On our redesigned site you will find:
• New, updated information on PneumoADIP’s activities
• Announcements of funding opportunities
• Current news in the field
• Slide presentations related to PneumoADIP and pneumococcal vaccines

PneumoADIP’s second Small Grants Program deadline is October 15th. Please remember that time is running out; After this October 15th deadline there will be only one more scheduled Small Grants funding cycle with a deadline of February 15, 2005. Please visit us online at www.preventpneumo.org for more information about the program and application procedures.

In the wake of an explosion of new activity and interest in the vaccine field a new peer-reviewed journal, Human Vaccines is now accepting manuscripts for its inaugural issue of January 2005. This journal – available both in print and online – will focus exclusively on vaccines in humans and will cover topics ranging from preclinical vaccine development to policy to the epidemiology of vaccine preventable diseases. For more information on how to submit a manuscript, please visit the Human Vaccines website at: http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/vaccines.

PneumoADIP is pleased to announce that it has executed a new agreement for surveillance of lab-confirmed pneumococcal diseases in Thailand. The agreement will support the inclusion of microbiologic surveillance into an existing surveillance system organized by the Thai International Emerging Infections Program, a joint collaboration of the Thai Ministry of Public Health and the US Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Scott Dowell, Director, IEIP will serve as the project director.

Since August 2002, the IEIP has supported active surveillance for hospitalized cases of radiographically confirmed pneumonia in Sakaeo Province. Surveillance staff in each hospital in the province collect basic demographic and clinical variables. Chest radiographs from patients with suspected pneumonia are electronically scanned so that they can be systematically interpreted by a panel of radiologists using standardized interpretations. Surveillance computers in each hospital share data with the central MOPH, so that all sites can rapidly access the data. This system was expanded in 2003 to include a second province, Nakhon Phanom.

All hospitals in these surveillance systems are equipped with basic laboratory facilities and staffed by one or more university trained laboratory technologists. Although routine microscopy, chemistry, hematology, and serologic testing are available, equipment and materials to conduct bacteriological testing are generally absent, except for at the central provincial hospital. With PneumoADIP funding, IEIP will introduce automated blood culture systems to establish the burden of culture-confirmed pneumococcal pneumonia in patients of all ages. Over the course of the study, the project is expected to collect up to 23,000 blood and/or CSF culture specimens. PneumoADIP funds will also help to strengthen laboratory capabilities in the province and at the central MOPH laboratories. Ultimately, this population-based surveillance for both pneumonia syndromes and culture-confirmed disease in patients of all ages should provide useful information on the burden of vaccine-preventable pneumococcal disease in this important country .

In August 2003 a consortium of Bangladeshi hospitals led by the ICDDR,B: Center for Health and Population Research and sponsored by GAVI’s PneumoADIP embarked on an ambitious disease surveillance project to better define the regional burden of pneumococcal disease. Bangladesh is a low income country with many health problems that compete for limited resources. Although famous for its diarrheal disease burden, pneumonia is currently the leading cause of death for children <5 years of age in Bangladesh.

Although S. pneumoniae is likely the cause of at least one-third of all severe pneumonia, prevention of pneumococcal disease is a not widely established public health priority in Bangladesh. An increased understanding of the burden of pneumococcal disease will enable decision makers to weigh various options for making the best use of limited resources. Through two separate arms of the project investigators are doing both rural and urban pneumococcal disease surveillance and are working to create a network of surveillance sites that promotes information sharing on disease serotypes and antimicrobial resistance patterns.

The surveillance project began in August 2003 and is expected to run through March 2006. During that time, the investigators team, led by Drs. David Sack, Abdullah Brooks, and Shams El-Arifeen, expect to collect >20,000 blood cultures and CSF specimens.

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