Can Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Infection in Children Be Eliminated Through Immunization?

Abstract

Emeritus Professor Alan Glasper from the University of Southampton discusses the quest to immunize children against the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) which is a major cause of hospital admission in children with bronchiolitis under five years of age. In January 1975, I was working on the respiratory ward at the East London branch of London’s Great Ormond Steet Hospitals (The National Archives, 2023). The disease the staff feared most in babies and young children under two years of age after whooping cough was bronchiolitis. Caused by RSV, bronchiolitis has been the scourge of families for generations especially during the winter period, leading to bed capacity pressures in many children’s hospitals around the world. Although RSV infection can be a minor illness, it can also be life threatening, especially in infants. In the USA, for example, RSV is the commonest cause of both bronchiolitis and pneumonia. Every year in the UK, approximately 20,000 children who have no underlying health issues require treatment in hospital for RSV infection which is about 3% of the birth cohort. Importantly, most children will become infected by RSV by their second birthday (Handforth et al., 2000). Elsewhere across the globe, the numbers of children infected by RSV are immense, and in 2015, for example, some 33 million children developed lower respiratory illness caused by this virus, with 3.2 million requiring hospital care and this led to about 59,000 deaths, with the majority of them from lowand middle-income countries (García et al., 2010). The world is still reeling from the Covid pandemic which stubbornly refuses to loosen its hold on mankind and now forms part of a perfect storm with the emergence of new highly infectious strains of influenza viruses. News reports suggest that China is currently experiencing 60,000 deaths per month from Covid, and as new strains of the virus mutate, countries around the world continue to fear further manifestations of the pandemic. Despite a decrease in the number of RSV infections during the pandemic when societal lockdowns were imposed in many countries around the world, a resurgence in RSV COMPREHENSIVE CHILD AND ADOLESCENT NURSING 2023, VOL. 46, NO. 1, 5–7 https://doi.org/10.1080/24694193.2023.2182593