Meningitis is a bacterial infection of the lining of the brain and spinal cord which has swept across 26 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa killing and disabling young people annually or cause severe brain damage within hours.
Making the commendation from findings reported in a special collection of 29 articles in the journal “Clinical Infectious Diseases,” with guest editors from the former Meningitis Vaccine Project, a partnership between WHO and the international health non-profit organization, PATH, the global health body noted that five years after an affordable meningitis A vaccine was introduced, its use has led to the control and near elimination of the deadly meningitis A disease in the African “meningitis belt.
The supplement, entitled “The Meningitis Vaccine Project: The development, licensure, introduction and impact of a new Group A meningococcal conjugate vaccine for Africa,” sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also revealed that in 2013, only four laboratory-confirmed cases of meningitis A were reported by the 26 countries in the belt, which stretches across the continent from Senegal to Ethiopia.
In the opening article of the supplement, WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, together with public health leaders from PATH; UNICEF; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and the vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India, among others, described the vaccine as a “stunning success.”
According to Chan, as of today, the vaccination campaigns reached more than 237 million people aged 1 through 29 years in 16 countries including Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sudan, and Togo.
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