Scientists are optimistic that a new meningitis vaccine will end the risk of devastating major epidemics; the new vaccine protects against meningitis A, the deadliest form of the disease.
The newly developed vaccine has been tested on 12 to 23- month-olds in Mali and Gambia, and has proved to be safe, without side effects and 20 times more powerful than existing vaccines.
WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan says the study is important as it brings real hope that the lives of thousands of children, teenagers and young adults will be saved by immunization.
Every decade or so large scale outbreaks of meningitis occur in the so-called "meningitis belt," which stretches from Senegal and the Gambia in the West to Ethiopia in the East, with an at-risk population of 430 million people.
The last major epidemic in 1996-97, killed 25,000 people and 250,000 people were affected.
In the first six months of this year there were almost 50,000 cases of meningitis reported in Africa raising concern that another major outbreak was imminent.
Dr. Marc LaForce, director of the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP) says Sub-Saharan Africa is the only place on earth where this occurs with such regularity and the results offer for the first time a new vaccine that was developed specifically for the area which, if introduced large scale, could bring an end to such epidemics.
Current immunization offers protection for only two years while the new vaccine could last up to 10 years, and with a cut-price of 40 cents a dose, it will be far less expensive than current vaccines.
The new vaccine was developed after a request for help to the WHO from a number of African health ministers following the last epidemic.