Some 11.1 million Chinese children have been vaccinated against hepatitis B since 2002 in a campaign to stop the spread of the disease, which has chronically infected an estimated 120 million people in China, the government said Tuesday.

The immunizations are part of a five-year, US$76 million (euro60 million) effort targeting central China and the country's poor west. It is co-sponsored by the Chinese government and the GAVI Alliance, a Geneva-based organization launched by the United Nations, several governments, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the vaccine industry to tackle health problems in developing countries.

The campaign took place in 22 provinces, where 5.5 million babies are born each year, said Yang Weizhong, deputy director of China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It focused on ensuring that infants were vaccinated within 24 hours of birth, which doctors believe is the only way to prevent the transmission of the disease from mother to newborn, he said. They were then given two subsequent doses to complete immunization.

The project also targeted children under 5 who had not been vaccinated.

The campaign is believed to have prevented about 200,000 future deaths from liver cancer, cirrhosis and other diseases linked to hepatitis B, according to GAVI Alliance and China's Ministry of Health.

"The project has been successfully implemented so far," said Jiang Zuojin, a Chinese deputy health minister, at a news conference.

Page:

1

2