US $1 target set for meningitis vaccine

Partners meeting in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, to discuss a regional strategy for the meningitis belt in Africa have suggested the vaccines should not cost more than US $1. The emergence of a newly epidemic strain of meningitis (known as W-135) in West Africa earlier this year has given renewed urgency to the search for a more effective and affordable vaccine, the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) stated last week. WHO, UNICEF, Medecins sans Frontieres and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have now said they intend to negotiate for a lower vaccine price during meetings with international manufacturers, GlaxoSmithkline and Aventis Pasteur. Discussions are also to take place on the idea of producing a cheaper monovalent vaccine that be an alternative in case manufacturers fail to produce enough of the preferred tetravalent vaccine quickly enough to tackle the new W-135 strain of meningitis. Tetravalent vaccines, which protect against four strains of meningitis, including W135, A and C, exist in limited doses and cost about $5, which is too expensive for most African countries. The proposed monovalent vaccine could be ready in 18 months, according to participants at the Ouagadougou meeting. An appeal for funding to provide enough vaccines is expected to made at the end of the three-day meeting, which is being attended by countries of the African meningitis belt, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali and Niger. "The main challenge, in the coming years, is to make available an efficient and reliable vaccine: able to assure a sustainable protection and available in enough quantities at an affordable price," the WHO representative in Burkina Faso, Mohamed Mahmoud Hacen, told the meeting. WHO invited its health partners to the Ouagadougou meeting for urgent consultations to prepare for the likelihood of further outbreaks of a new meningitis outbreak in Africa, possibly as soon as next year. Meningitis epidemics occur periodically in the "meningitis belt" of Africa, which stretches from the West African coast to the Horn of Africa. An outbreak of W-135 in Burkina Faso, which began in February and continued until May, infected more than 12,000 people and killed almost 1,500. It was the first time the particular W-135 strain had been identified. WHO estimates that it and its partners in the international coordinating group on vaccine provision for epidemic meningitis control will need between two million and five million doses of tetravalent vaccine in a few months' time.