WHO appeals for funds to buy 6 million doses of meningitis vaccine for Africa

Gearing up for the meningitis season, the United Nations health agency today appealed for funds to purchase six million doses of an inexpensive new vaccine to enable African countries to build an emergency response stockpile.

Each year, meningitis sweeps across sub-Saharan Africa, sometimes igniting outbreaks involving 100,000 people or more, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Vaccination is the only effective public health weapon to contain these outbreaks, especially after a strain, W135, for which no affordable vaccine existed, emerged two years ago.

Working with GlaxoSmithKline and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a vaccine for the new strain was developed in record time. It is being made available to WHO at €1 (euro) per dose, but due to production constraints, funds to purchase the necessary six million doses must be found within days.

“This is an urgent health situation which forces quick action,” said WHO’s Assistant Director-General in charge of Communicable Diseases, Anarfi Asamoa-Baah. “But if we can do it, we can ease suffering, save lives and bring hope to tens of thousands of people who live in the direct path of this disease.”

The 350 million people who live in the “meningitis belt” stretching from Ethiopia to Senegal are particularly vulnerable, WHO said. The W135 threat exploded in Burkina Faso last year, striking more than 13,000 people and killing more than 1,500 of them. At least 10 per cent of those infected die and many others are left permanently disabled.