The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced it is launching a $1.5 billion campaign to eliminate outbreaks of bacterial meningitis across Africa by 2030, reported The Business Standard.
Notably, over 50 million African children had their meningitis vaccinations delayed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, prompting fears of a resurgence of the deadly disease.
WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said that a new effective vaccine against meningitis will be given to people in 26 most-affected African countries. The vaccine has reportedly found to be safe and effective against multiple forms of meningitis in clinical trials.
Moeti said the global health body is hopeful that the vaccine will get authorized by the first quarter of 2023 after which it will be made available for donors to buy it for Africa. She said the vaccine could be rolled out next year and administered until 2030, when the UN health body hopes to stop bacterial meningitis outbreaks in the continent of 54 countries and 1.3 billion people.
WHO estimated the meningitis elimination campaign will help to save the lives of more than 140,000 people every year but that will depend on the availability of the vaccine and health officials being able to administer it.
Moeti said no new cases of meningitis have been recorded in the past five years on the continent due to a robust vaccination program. The COVID -19 pandemic outbreak and restrictions has, however, left hundreds of millions of Africans at risk.
As per a WHO report, meningitis control activities were reduced by 50 percent in 2020 compared to 2019 before the COVID-19 outbreak in Africa, although a slight improvement was recorded in 2021.
Accoridng to WHI data, children are most threatened by meningitis and about half of meningitis cases and deaths occur in children under 5 years of age.
More than 350 million people in 24 high-risk African countries received jabs of the vaccine since 2010, until the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic slowed down progress.
