UN extends use of meningitis vaccine to African infants

The World Health Organisation has approved giving a groundbreaking meningitis vaccine manufactured in India, which does not have to be stored in fridges or iceboxes, to babies across Africa, experts said. WHO’s thumbs up for MenAfriVac in mass immunisation programmes will boost the campaign against meningitis in the world’s poorest continent, the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP) said in a statement. Launched in 2010, the vaccine has been administered to more than 215 million people in the 15 countries of the African meningitis belt — Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan and Togo. MenAfriVac was developed by MVP — a partnership between WHO and Path, a non-profit global health group — and is manufactured by the Serum Institute of India. “Initial mass vaccination campaigns with MenAfriVac have been highly effective in reducing the number of meningitis A cases,” said Marie-Pierre Preziosi, the head of MVP. Until...