Vaccine to hit disease in 25 African nations

Epidemics of bacterial meningitis have swept across Africa for more than a century, inward with the dry harmattan winds to kill with terrifying speed. But today a drive starts to inoculate tens of millions of West Africans with a latest vaccine in what scientists hope will be the beginning of the end of ravaging meningitis epidemics. The aim is for immunization to extend, from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east, and bring the disease under control in a belt of 25 nations that girds the continent, saving an predictable 150,000 lives by 2015.

Hundreds of millions more dollars are still wanted to accomplish that goal, but the meningitis vaccine itself is a milestone in developing cheap vaccines against neglected diseases that afflict poor countries, experts say. More than 1 million cases of meningitis have been report in Africa over the past two decades. The vaccine works beside the group a meningitis strain that cause more than eight out of 10 cases on the continent. Bill Gates, whose foundation mainly financed the Endeavour, contrasted the undertaking with the growth of vaccines for measles, smallpox and polio.

''All those things were shaped because rich people got sick,'' he said. ''This is the first vaccine that goes through the entire process where there was no rich world market, and it had to be optimized at a very low price.'' The meningitis vaccination drives begin today in Burkina Faso and will also obtain under way in Mali and Niger this month. So far, donors and African countries have raise $US95 million of the estimated $US570 million cost, World Health Organization officials say. But the global financial disaster has pinched foreign aid spending, departure the remainder in doubt.

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