Product development partnerships hit their stride: lessons from developing a meningitis vaccine for Africa

The Meningitis Vaccine Project, a so-called product development partnership, developed a new vaccine against bacterial meningitis, an inflammation of brain tissues that causes an estimated 10,000 deaths among African children and young people each year. The vaccine--known as MenAfriVac and specifically targeted for use in low-income countries in Africa--was designed to be made available to governments at a price of fifty cents per dose. The Meningitis Vaccine Project is an example of how product development partnerships have reinvigorated research on vaccines for neglected diseases. These partnerships disperse the multiple tasks of product development across a network of partners that are best suited for each task. The vaccine was rapidly embraced by African health officials, and in its first few weeks on the market, in late 2010, more than nineteen million people in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger were vaccinated.