Paediatrician backs child rotavirus vaccine

Medical experts want a vaccine for rotavirus, the commonest cause of severe diarrhoea in young children, to be included in the State’s primary childhood immunisation programme.

Kevin Connolly, chairman of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee, said every child in Ireland would have at least one rotavirus infection by age five.

Dr Connolly, a retired paediatrician, said most children who had a rotavirus infection last year were under one year old.