[Pneumococcal infection is a vaccine-preventable disease now]

Analysis of pneumococcal disease burden in Russia, which is a serious threat to children's and adults' health and which was underrecognized until last decade, is presented. Extrapolating data about etiologic structure of pneumonia and meningitis on published incidence figures, we can estimate the incidence of pneumococcal pneumonia in children in Russia: 490 per 100,000 for children aged 1 month - 15 years, and 1060 per 100,000 for children aged 1 month - 4 years. For complicated forms, these figures are 90 and 181 per 100,000 respectively. Mean incidence of pneumococcal meningitis is 8 per 100,000 children aged < 5 years with variations from 2 to 15 depending from region. Estimated overall incidence of pneumococcal bacteremia in children < 5 years in Russia is 100 per 100,000. Despite of antibacterial therapy, bacteremic forms of pneumococcal infection lead to death in 15 - 20% of adult patients, whereas in elderly this figure amounts 40%. These data demonstrate the importance of wider use of both polysaccharide and conjugated pneumococcal vaccines licensed in Russia.