Dr Hunt from Milton Surgery is keen to share with the village the results from the vaccinating babies against rotavirus. Rotavirus is a particularly nasty disease and is the most common cause of severe diarrhoea among infants and young children. Worldwide more than 450,000 children under five years of age still die from rotavirus infection each year, mostly in developing countries, but even in the UK it is still a killer and results in many hospitalisations and distress both to the child and their parents.

Vaccination started in the UK in July last year using an oral vaccine and the first results of programme have just been published online (Adobe/PDF, 732KB). They’re best summed up by the graph above which shows that at the peak they were getting about one sixth of the cases of a typical year pre-vaccination.