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February 07, 2003

INTERNATIONAL IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"UN Distributes Cheap Meningitis Vaccine in Africa"

Agence France Presse (www.afp.com/english/home) (02/06/03)

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Thursday that it has begun distribution of an inexpensive meningitis vaccine in Africa designed to fight strains of the disease that include a new strain that has been ravaging Burkina Faso.  The ACW135 vaccine will act against meningitis A and meningitis C, the more common versions of the illness, and will fight the W135 strain that infected thousands of people in Burkina Faso in 2002. The group said that 21 countries in the "African meningitis area," from Ethiopia in the east to Senegal in the west, will receive as many as 3 million doses of the vaccine at prices that reflect their various levels of financial need.  The WHO said that it asked for help from pharmaceutical companies on the manufacture of the vaccine, and GlaxoSmithKline responded within just a few months with the vaccine as requested, while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation paid for most of the cost of the project.

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