The GAVI Alliance, the Geneva, Switzerland-based global health organization, said today it has committed $100 million to support the use of a meningitis vaccine developed by Seattle-based PATH. The vaccine, MenAfriVac, was developed through a $70 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and a 10-year development effort. It has been widely used in recent months in Burkina Faso, and now GAVI said it wants to further disseminate it in Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeria. For more of the background on the meningitis vaccine effort, check this feature I wrote back in December.
Author: Luke Timmerman
Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.
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