02 Feb New meningitis vaccine reaches 19.5 million
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!
Group A meningococcal meningitis has been a problem for sub-Saharan Africans for more than a century. Nearly 450 million people are at risk of getting this brutal illness, which kills one in 10 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 and 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.