In Africa, a 50-cent vaccine saves thousands

You want "Wonderful Things," I gives ya Wonderful Things. MenAfriVac is a new vaccine for meningitis A—a disease that kills thousands of people in Africa every year. It's far, far cheaper than previous vaccines ... and it works better, too.

MenAfriVac is much cheaper than existing meningitis A vaccines, at 50¢ compared with $120 per dose. It is also more potent. Unlike conventional vaccines, which are based on sugars resembling those on the surface of Neisseria meningitides, a bacterium that causes meningitis, the new vaccine splices the sugars to a carrier protein that is better at stirring up the body's immune system. "It makes the immune response much more vigorous," says Marc LaForce, director of the global Meningitis Vaccine Project, which developed MenAfriVac.

Antibodies against the bacterium continue to be produced long after vaccination, providing hope that a single jab may be enough to give lifelong protection.

So far, no recipient of the vaccine has been infected, and the few cases that have occurred in treated areas were unvaccinated visitors from neighbouring areas.

MenAfriVac is currently being rolled out in the 25 countries, from Senegal to Sudan, that make up Africa's "meningitis belt."

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

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Anonymous

“MenAfriVac is much cheaper than existing meningitis A vaccines, at 50Â¢ compared with $120 per dose.”

Stupid money-grubbing Big Pharma, always in it for the obscene profits.
magicjo

i was so pissed/ dismayed to find this wasn’t a vac that fitty have pumped his millions into – you almost made my day…
winkybb

Wouldn’t it be better to spend the money on womb transplants?
Anonymous

Very hopeful news!

Keeping an eye out for increased effectiveness in treatment against one disease is important. But it is equally important to make cross-disease comparisons in terms of cost-effectiveness (in terms of DALY’s). See the comparison here:
http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/resources/immunization.php

Let’s do what we can to bring health to the world!
mordicai

But if we price vaccines to cost, how will the pharmaceutical companies make money? A few thousand lives is precious little to pay for the wealthiest 1% to keep getting richer, if you think about it.
Kieran O’Neill

I saw a talk by these guys at a conference last year. It’s a pretty inspiring story of the possibility of developing drugs on a non-profit basis.

Granted, it depends on a fair amount of prior work and tech development, but it was still able to roll out a substantial public health intervention well within the budget of even the poorest of countries for a relatively small amount (few million) of donated money.
awjtawjt

It’s a wonderful thing. But, unfortunately, Tuberculosis is far and away the biggest killer.
febryle

No wonder autism rates in Africa are skyrocketing! Oh, wait…
gman

Maybe my cynicism is just flaring up but I’m waiting for some pharmaceutical company lobby to try and stop this evil threat to their profits immediately, if not sooner.
Anonymous

From their website:

In May 2001, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded PATH a US$70 million grant to launch the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP), a joint project between the World Health Organization (WHO) and PATH. Ten years later, and following vaccine licensure and WHO prequalification of MenAfriVacâ„¢, the Foundation awarded the project a 2.5-year, US$17 million extension grant to support clinical research related to the use of the newly developed vaccine in infants.
urizon

And this is profitable, how? Sounds like these parasites want to destroy shareholder value.
The Tim

Oops, you’ve got a bit of Verizon Math in your headline…
- Alvis
  
  First thing I noticed, too!
  
  .50-cent =! 50Â¢
  
  FYI: http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html
Anonymous

Oh, a cheap, readily available drug? Sounds like a perfect candidate for the new FDA approval method, in which we take a cheap, readily available drug, name it “Makena” and then give a monopoly on it to a drug company who raises the price from $10 to $1500.
Anonymous

So when does America get this? A one time saving of $119.50 may not sound like much to some people, but to poor parents across the nation, every bit saved on their child’s medical care counts.

~D. Walker
Nadreck

Hopefully the anti-Vaccine crowd won’t kill too many people by dumping on the initiative; although I’m sure they’ll try.
Woolly Mittens

Funny how you never hear anti-vaccers complain about this sort of thing.
Churba

I knew .50 Cent’s music was bad, but Killing thousands? I find that a bit hard to swallow. I didn’t even know they sold his albums in Africa.
Trevel

About time Fitty gave something back to the community. I had no idea he was doing vaccination research, though…
jeligula

If we had this strain in the States, you can bet it would be well over $150 a dose.
Anonymous

All kinds of cheap fixes for a troubled world sweety.

here’s a few that come to mind:
http://www.leprosy.ca/
http://www.cbmcanada.org/default.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFjQXkEfz2c