Report of SAGE November 2011 meeting published

WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on immunization recommended, at its November 2011 meeting, that to eradicate polio there must be accountability and consequences at all levels for individuals, institutions and governments who fail to deliver on their mandates. SAGE stated unequivocally that the risk of failure to finish global polio eradication constitutes a programmatic emergency of global proportions for public health and is not acceptable under any circumstances. Moreover, the country reports produced by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative Independent Monitoring Board must identify the root causes why some infected countries are failing to interrupt transmission and hold appropriate individuals, agencies and authorities responsible. Failure, SAGE warned, would lead to a resurgence of the disease and would be seen as the most expensive public health failure in history.

In a position paper, published in the Weekly Epidemiological Record today, WHO recommends that countries with high or intermediate endemic rates of meningococcal disease and countries with frequent epidemics introduce large scale vaccination programmes, using meningococcal conjugate vaccines. In these countries, the meningococcal vaccine may be administered through routine immunization programmes and supplementary immunization activities, for example during disease outbreaks.

First results from a large-scale phase 3 clinical trial of the most advanced malaria vaccine candidate, RTS,S/AS01, announced at the Global Malaria Forum in Seattle, show a 55% reduction in the frequency of malaria episodes during the 12 months of follow-up in children 5-17 months of age at first immunization. "Malaria has never had a vaccine get this far. If licensed, it would be the very first human vaccine against a parasitic disease", said the WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, during her keynote address to participants at the 3-day Forum, a major event for malaria experts across the world.

The World Health Organization and Sanofi Pasteur today celebrated the donation by Sanofi Pasteur to WHO of a vaccine seed-strain used for the production of oral polio vaccine (OPV). The type 3 polio seed-strain is an original viral seed used to produce large quantities of OPV against type 3 poliovirus.