"At last, we have the tools to contain small outbreaks like this one
before they cripple an entire region," the coordinator of the Geneva-based
World Health Organization (WHO)
Global Alert and Response unit, Michael J. Ryan, said following a new outbreak
in recent weeks.
"Every part of the public health network pulled together to build this
system," Dr. Ryan added. "Humanitarian organizations, industry,
international agencies, lab trainers and private contributors have all worked
together, and through their combined efforts an enormous tragedy in Africa may
have been averted."
Meningitis, an
inflammation of the coverings of the brain and/or spinal cord, sweeps across
sub-Saharan Africa every year, sometimes triggering outbreaks involving 100,000
people or more. But mass response plans had been successful in limiting
outbreaks until two years ago when the W135 strain emerged in Burkina Faso,
infecting 13,000 people, 1,500 of them fatally, before the outbreak burned
itself out.
WHO at once started organizing partnerships to build a "mass
intervention delivery system" to combat W135, and laboratory workers and
field epidemiologists were trained and supplied with materials to rapidly detect
and track the strain.
At the same time, pharmaceutical partner GlaxoSmithKline developed a new
vaccine that was tested and approved in record time. Following negotiations with
WHO, the company priced the vaccine affordably, at one Euro a dose.
After an urgent WHO appeal in September, funds came in from the governments
of Ireland, Italy, Monaco and the United Kingdom, and from Médecins Sans Frontières,
the Norwegian Red Cross, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and private
individuals to purchase an emergency stockpile, which is now ready for the new
outbreak. The first doses will be used in Burkina Faso in the next few days.
But WHO said funds were still needed for injection materials and supplies and
to finance other aspects of future vaccine campaigns. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10347&Cr=Meningitis&Cr1=#
