India leads world in rota-virus infection among children under 5

India led the world in rota-virus infection which caused deaths of close to 100,000 children below the age of five who died of diarrhoea in 2008, said a leading British medical magazine. This accounted for 22 percent of the total deaths reported globally, the lcoal media quoted ts the latest edition of the Lancet Infection Diseases magazine as saying Tuesday. Diarrhoea related with the rotavirus infection resulted in 453, 000 deaths worldwide in 2008 among children younger than five years--37 per cent of deaths attributable to diarrhoea. Five countries accounted for more than half of all deaths attributable to such infection: Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Pakistan. In this new study, some doctors at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the United States did a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies with at least 100 children younger than five years who had been admitted to hospital with diarrhoea. They also included data from countries that participated in the WHO-coordinated Global Rotavirus Surveillance Network.