At the Clinton Global Initiative annual conference, PATH announced the introduction of a ground-breaking vaccine to eliminate epidemic meningitis in Burkina Faso.

The meningococcal conjugate vaccine, developed by the Meningitis Vaccine Project, a partnership between the World Health Organization and PATH and produced by Serum Institute of India Limited, has been developed for serogroup A Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus), the principal cause of meningitis epidemics in Africa for more than 100 years.

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation is committing $4 million to the project that will vaccinate more than nine million people between the ages of 1 and 29 against meningitis.
The Meningitis Vaccine Project, a partnership between PATH and WHO, will continue to raise the remainder of the $14 million required to conduct the initial activities.

More than 700,000 cases of the disease have been reported in the past ten years alone. The disease is virtually unknown in the United States, yet causes devastating loss of life and permanent disability in Africa.