New meningitis vaccine for Africa

GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK Biologicals) in collaboration with the national Belgian regulatory authorities and the World Health Authority (WHO) have made a new trivalent meningitis vaccine for Africa.

The new meningitis ACW135 vaccine has been specifically developed and manufactured by GSK Biologicals' at its worldwide centre in Rixensart, Belgium. The vaccine protects against the typical meningitis strains sweeping Africa - strains A and C - plus the new strain W135 which was seen for the first time last year in Burkina Faso where it affected over 14,453 people and killed 1,743.

GSK Biologicals made the development of this vaccine a priority in the second half of last year and reacted quickly developing a customised vaccine for the epidemic in Africa. 'GSK Biologicals has great hopes that this new vaccine will save many lives and would like to thank the Belgian regulatory authorities and the WHO in making this a priority', said Jean Stephenne, president and general manager, GSK Biologicals.

Three million doses of the new vaccine will be made available at reduced cost over the coming months for use in the WHO's impact study in the African meningitis belt of 21 countries. The non-government organisation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be providing funding to purchase the vaccine.

Meningitis is a killer disease affecting mostly children. Fever nausea and headache can develop quickly to cause serious neurological damage, deafness, coma and death. Unless treated, up to half of those will die. In 2002 alone, there were 44,280 cases of meningitis and 5,531 deaths reported to the WHO's surveillance systems in the African region.