TY - JOUR AU - Choudhuri, Debajeet AU - Huda, Tanvir AU - Theodoratou, Evropi AU - Nair, Harish AU - Zgaga, Lina AU - Falconer, Rachel AU - Luksic, Ivana AU - Johnson, Hope L. AU - Zhang, Jian Shayne F. AU - El Arifeen, Shams AU - Nelson, Christopher B. AU - Borrow, Ray AU - Campbell, Harry AU - Rudan, Igor PY - 2011 DA - 2011/04/13 TI - An evaluation of emerging vaccines for childhood meningococcal disease JO - BMC Public Health SP - S29 VL - 11 IS - 3 AB - Meningococcal meningitis is a major cause of disease worldwide, with frequent epidemics particularly affecting an area of sub-Saharan Africa known as the “meningitis belt”. Neisseria meningitidis group A (MenA) is responsible for major epidemics in Africa. Recently W-135 has emerged as an important pathogen. Currently, the strategy for control of such outbreaks is emergency use of meningococcal (MC) polysaccharide vaccines, but these have a limited ability to induce herd immunity and elicit an adequate immune response in infant and young children. In recent times initiatives have been taken to introduce meningococcal conjugate vaccine in these African countries. Currently there are two different types of MC conjugate vaccines at late stages of development covering serogroup A and W-135: a multivalent MC conjugate vaccine against serogroup A,C,Y and W-135; and a monovalent conjugate vaccine against serogroup A. We aimed to perform a structured assessment of these emerging meningococcal vaccines as a means of reducing global meningococal disease burden among children under 5 years of age. SN - 1471-2458 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-S3-S29 DO - 10.1186/1471-2458-11-S3-S29 ID - Choudhuri2011 ER -