MenAfriVac is a vaccine developed for use in sub-Saharan Africa for children and adults between 9 months and 29 years of age against meningococcal bacterium Neisseria meningitidis group A.
[1][2] Epidemics of meningococcal A meningitis, which is a bacterial infection of the thin lining surrounding the brain and spinal cord, have swept across 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for a century, killing and disabling young people every year.
[3] A year later, in 2001, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided a ten-year, $70 million grant to establish the Meningitis Vaccine Project, a partnership between PATH and WHO.
[4] In 2002, the collaboration supported reinforced meningitis surveillance activities in 12 countries in Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Togo.
[8][9] In November 2015, a special collection of 29 articles was published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases—with guest editors from Public Health England and the former Meningitis Vaccine Project about the steps taken for the development, introduction, and evaluation of MenAfriVac.
But scientists warned that unless countries within the belt incorporate the meningitis A vaccine in routine immunization schedules for infants, there is a risk that the disease could rebound in 15 years' time.
The TT is prepared by extraction by ammonium sulfate precipitation and the toxin is inactivated with formalin from cultures of Clostridium tetani grown in a modified Mueller–Hinton agar.