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PATH
New meningitis vaccine reaches 19.5 million people
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, government donors 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.
But 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. Learn more about the Meningitis Vaccine Project on PATH’s website. And be sure to read our blog series, “Meningitis Vaccine on a Mission” — Kathleen Donnelly from PATH chronicles her experiences with the new vaccine in Africa.
Photo courtesy of the World Health Organization
The talk of the town
Our friends at PATH are on an amazing mission to bring a new meningitis vaccine to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Follow their stories on the ONE Blog as the journey unfolds.
Amadou Francois Dipama is a town crier. Every day between the hours of 3 and 6 p.m., he steadily traverses the streets of Saaba, Burkina Faso by bike or foot, doing the local version of the evening news.
Amadou François Dipama with his bullhorn.
For a small fee, Amadou, 54, will raise his bullhorn to his weathered lips, flip the switch, and, after a punishing blast of feedback, declaim items of interest to the people of Saaba. He might announce a show, a dance or a community meeting. Lately, he’s been talking about meningitis A.
All of the young people need to come get the vaccine, Amadou says.
In line for MenAfriVac™ in Saaba.
To get the word out about Burkina Faso’s campaign to vaccinate everyone between the ages of 1 and 29 with MenAfriVac™, public health officials have used modern techniques, such as television and radio announcements. Posters advertising the campaign are taped to health center walls and vehicles. Ball caps with the campaign’s logo are on the heads of some health workers; others have gone house-to-house to make sure their neighbors know the vaccine is here. And Amadou and his colleagues have been out with the bullhorns.
Whatever they’ve been using in Saaba, it seems to be working. On our way to an early morning visit to the region’s health center, we pass several lines of people. In their hands are bright white “cartes de vaccination,” records updated each time they receive a dose.
In the area where Amadou brings the news each night, nurse Boubacar Sawadogo, 41, reports that more than three-quarters of the people ages 1 to 29 came to get their vaccination during the first three days of the campaign. That’s much better, he says, than the rates for vaccination against some other diseases.
“For this vaccine, no one has said no,” Boubacar says. “People are all for it. They know it is a serious disease.”
-by Kathleen Donnelly, PATH senior publications associate
The silence after meningitis and the promise of a new vaccine
Our friends at PATH are on an amazing mission to bring a new meningitis vaccine to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Follow their stories on the ONE Blog as the journey unfolds.
Alidou Ouedraogo can’t remember when meningitis stole his hearing. He frowns slightly as he watches his teacher’s fingers spell out the question in sign language. He gently touches his head, to indicate he’s thinking. Then he signs, “When I was very small.”
It’s been at least 16 years since Alidou recovered from meningitis, but not without experiencing one of its most common side effects: hearing loss.
Age 19 now, he began school at the Integrated Education and Training Center of Deaf and Hearers in his hometown of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso when he was three.
The school, which is known by its French acronym, CEFISE, is directed by Théresè P. Kafando, who helped her late husband build the school from 19 students in 1988 to about 3,500 today.
From the start, CEFISE has accepted an exuberant mix of deaf and hearing children on the theory that they help each other learn. Today, about 450 of her students are deaf, Madame Kafondo says. At least 80 percent of those students, she estimates, are deaf because of meningitis.
At the CEFISE school, 80 percent of deaf students have had meningitis.In a bright yellow dress and chartreuse sling-backs, Madame Kafondo hurries across the school’s dirt courtyard, dispensing correction or affection to students, depending on need.
On the third day of a countrywide vaccination campaign, the five-year-olds are lined up and ready to receive MenAfriVac™, a new vaccine that holds promise to eliminate the strain of meningitis that causes epidemics in African countries like Burkina Faso.
If a similar vaccine had been available close to 20 years ago, would Alidou’s world be different now? It’s a question he sees no sense in pondering, choosing instead to look ahead. He is interested in electricity and how it works. He would like to go to the university. He doesn’t know which career he’ll choose.
“Right now I can’t tell you,” he signs. “There are many, many things I can do.”
-Kathleen Donnelly, senior publications associate, PATH
Photos courtesy of PATH/Gabe Bienczycki
Beginning the end of epidemic meningitis
Our friends at PATH are on an amazing mission to bring a new meningitis vaccine to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Follow their stories on the ONE Blog as the journey unfolds.
In Emmanual Ouisnoma’s village — Korsimoro, Burkina Faso — people know that epidemic meningitis is a disease that kills. And that’s not all, says Ouisnoma, a long-time health center volunteer who spoke with me yesterday about the effect of meningitis in his village. They know that a vaccine that can protect against meningitis for 10 years or more is “something really special.”
I’m here in Burkina Faso because of the extraordinary aspects of that vaccine, MenAfriVac™, developed through the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP). Along with other representatives of PATH, which is a partnering with the World Health Organization in MVP, I’m here to document the launch of a vaccine that could mean the end of epidemic meningitis in villages like Ouisnoma’s.
My colleagues and I have been here for only about 48 hours, but we’ve already seen the enthusiasm the vaccine attracts.
This morning, we joined about 2,000 others in Ouagadougou’s Place de la Nation for a celebration of the first countrywide vaccination campaign using the new vaccine, MenAfriVac™. The central square was dressed for a party, and the invited guests — a mix of global health superstars and hundreds of Burkinabe schoolchildren — were in a festive mood.
After Burkina Faso’s president addressed the crowd, a ripple ran through the kids in one especially excited sector. A group of young children began making its way toward dozens of health workers in white coats sitting at tables laden with coolers holding vaccine. Seconds later, there was a crush of press photographers as the first few children got their shots.
Pitroipa Boukaré, a 3-year-old pixie with an expression befitting the seriousness of the occasion, received one of the first doses while sitting in a health worker’s lap. You can see her being vaccinated in the video that accompanies this post. The sting was a shock, and she cried. But she was soon comforted and gently placed on the ground to make way for the next child.
Her mother was nearby, but Pitroipa stood her ground, eyes wide as she watched, along with the world, the beginning of the end of epidemic meningitis.
-Kathleen Donnelly, senior publications associate, PATH
Coming next week: meningitis protection for Africa
Our friends at PATH are on an amazing mission to bring a new meningitis vaccine to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Follow their stories on the ONE Blog as the journey unfolds.
On Monday morning, I’ll wake up in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and join the crowds of people moving toward the Place de la Nation in the center of town. As the sun rises high and hot in the West African sky, we’ll stand together in the rose-colored dust of the plaza and watch musicians and dancers perform. A few dignitaries, including the nation’s president and the head of the World Health Organization, will speak. Then, the children and young adults of Ouagadougou will form a line, bare their shoulders and receive a dose of a vaccine with the potential to end epidemic meningitis in Africa.
The first mass vaccination campaigns with MenAfriVac™ will have begun. By early next year, some 20 million people throughout Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger will have received the vaccine, and will be protected from a disease that has killed or disabled hundreds of thousands in their homelands.
WHO says all children should receive a vaccine to prevent diarrhea
The World Health Organization’s expert advisory panel on immunizations announced today that all children should receive a vaccine that can prevent a severe type of diarrhea and vomiting caused by the rotavirus.
Every year, 600,000 children die from severe diarrhea caused by rotavirus around the world. Although most of these deaths occur in developing countries, rotavirus also afflicts children in the developed world. In the United States, 55,000 children are hospitalized because of rotavirus infections every year.
Research to determine whether the rotavirus vaccine is safe and effective in countries with high child mortality has proven successful: cases of severe diarrhea were reduced after administration of the vaccine. Funded by the GAVI Alliance, and conducted by PATH, WHO, and GlaxoSmithKline, as well as many research institutions in South Africa and Malawi, this research “clears the way for vaccines that will protect children in the developing world from one of the most deadly diseases they face,” said Dr. Tachi Yamada, President of the Global Health Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
As one of the diseases that causes the greatest number of deaths and illness in the developing world but receives little attention and resources, the prevention and treatment of diarrheal diseases is a priority area for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Their work involves funding research to determine the causes of diarrheal disease in developing countries, supporting the development of a vaccine, including the rotavirus vaccine, and efforts to develop medicines and other treatments for diarrheal disease.
Delivering the rotavirus vaccine with a package of other essential interventions including improving water and sanitation to children in need in Africa and Asia will be critical for reducing child mortality.
-Lisa Fleisher
Reporting From the World Water Forum
ONE has partners on the ground in Turkey for the 5th World Water Forum. Our partners will be providing guest blog posts throughout the week to keep us updated on the meeting’s proceedings. Stay tuned for more in this series!
As I was quoted in the Associated Press the other day,“In America, diarrhea is bad takeout, in Chad, it’s the difference between life and death.”
I’m here at the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul to help coordinate a journalist workshop on the health aspects of water, sanitation and hygiene. Journalists have come from as far away as Indonesia, Laos and Peru to learn about this massive, but surmountable, challenge.
We want to bring attention to this under-reported issue, as more children die of diarrhea and other water and sanitation related diseases than die of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Meanwhile, 80% of research and development funding for diseases that disproportionately affect the poor is spent on these “big three” diseases. We aim to point out this disparity, not to take away funding from the more well-known diseases, but to see that more resources go to solving the water and sanitation crisis.
What is also unique about preventing and treating diarrhea is that affordable solutions are available now. Ceramic water filters, rope pumps, and ecosan toilets are all effective and sustainable solutions.
Sessions this week at the World Water Forum are going to focus on vast array of topics, such as new technologies, entrepreneurship and child health. The issue of poor water and sanitation in schools will also be discussed by UNICEF. An astounding 50% of schools in the developing world do not have access to water and sanitation.
PATH, WSSCC (Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council), and Water Advocates are a few of the organizers of the journalist forum. We hope that the workshop and forum will increase attention on the health aspects of the water and sanitation crisis. With 5,000 people dying each day due to dirty water, and poor sanitation and hygiene, this cannot wait.
-John Sauer, Water Advocates
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TAGS: Meningitis, PATH, Vaccines