On May 29, 2001, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced today a global health grant of $70 million in support of a partnership between Seattle-based Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to eliminate meningitis epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. The newly created Meningitis Vaccine Project is a ten-year partnership effort to develop and introduce a serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine in Africa.

This vaccine is expected to provide immunity in infants, elicit longer duration of protection and interrupt transmission for prevention of epidemics. Development and introduction of this conjugate vaccine entails the establishment of a partnership with the private sector and many other groups such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the leading technical partner.

Between 1988 and 1997, 704,000 cases of meningitis and 100,000 deaths were reported in the so-called “African meningitis belt,” which stretches from Ethiopia in East Africa to The Gambia in the west. The largest recorded epidemic, with more than 200,000 cases and 20,000 deaths reported, occurred in 1996. These reports typically substantially underestimate the actual burden of the disease. During epidemics, routine reporting systems break down, many patients die before reaching a health center, and the cause of death goes unrecorded.