Recent news
February 2011
New meningitis vaccine has reached nearly 20 million people, blog says
February 3, 2011 -- “A few months ago, our friends at PATH set out on a mission to immunize 20 million people in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger with an affordable new meningitis vaccine, MenAfriVac™. Well, we just got word that they pretty much reached that number—they’ve administered the vaccine to nearly 19.5 million people,” Malaka Gharib writes in a ONE blog post. She adds that nearly 450 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are at risk of group A meningococcal meningitis, which “kills one in ten who become sick and leaves a quarter of survivors deaf or disabled. With the help of the World Health Organization and donors from the US Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PATH’s Meningitis Vaccine Project is now armed with a vaccine that could help eliminate group A meningitis from Africa for good.” Gharib concludes that “there’s still a long way to go—there are still 22 more African countries that are still at risk, and the lack of resources could stall progress.” See the link below to read the full blog post.
