Encouraging Results Offer Hope To Lakhs Risha Chitlangia | TNN New Delhi: If everything goes as per the plan, in next three years India would get a shot in the arm in its fight against diarrhoea. With encouraging results from phase 2 trials, experts are confident that an indigenous rotavirus vaccine would prevent rotavirus infections and bring down cases of severe diarrhoea among infants and children. Scientists who are part of the project say the phase 3 trials on high-risk groups to test the efficacy of the vaccine are scheduled to start in 2009. In India, more than one lakh infants and children die of rotavirus diarrhoea each year. The rotavirus strain (116E) that the scientists are using for the development of the candidate vaccine was isolated in the neonatal unit of AIIMS nearly 20 years ago.