Every winter there are thousands of people in the country whose health is at risk from the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), a disease that this past winter stressed the capacity of the hospital system and that in some cases can be fatal, especially in infants and adults. greater.
However, this reality could change in the short term with the development of the first vaccine to combat this pathology, which has already been approved for use in the United States and Europe.
“RSV, the infections that year after year affect both boys, girls and also the elderly, are extremely serious and often cause death, in addition to a great hospital overload,” said the epidemiologist and director of the Department of Public Health of the University of Talca, Erika Retamal Contreras, adding that “any measure that prevents or reduces the risks of this disease is great news.”
The vaccine called ABRYSVO, was developed by the pharmaceutical laboratory Pfizer and is aimed mainly at people over 60 and pregnant, who would transfer the antibodies to their unborn children and protect them during the first six months of life, the stage in which infants they are especially vulnerable to the respiratory infection generated by this pathogen.
In Chile, meanwhile, for these inoculations to be used, they must first go through the approval of the Public Health Institute (ISP) “and once it is authorized, it is incorporated into the national immunization plan,” said the academic.
In addition, he stressed that seasonal viruses mutate every year, so it would be expected that, as in the case of influenza, “we must have different vaccines every year in order to protect the population at risk of getting sick.”
Along the same lines, the academic highlighted that the use of this type of primary prevention is not only good news for the population at risk of RSV, but also for everyone, since it would help to avoid overloading the health system during the winter period and would make it possible to treat other pathologies more expeditiously.
2023-09-01 15:24:04
#vaccine #prevent #infant #elderly #mortality #syncytial #virus
