Recently GAVI issued an exciting new opportunity for speeding the prevention of life-threatening Hib meningitis and pneumonia in developing countries. In late February it posted a solicitation for a >$35 million Hib Initiative. Like the process used to select the host institutions for the ADIPs, this is a competitive process in which institutions or partnerships are required to submit a detailed proposal and on the basis of expert reviews, GAVI will select the best proposal. Proposals are due on March 22 nd, 2005 . To see the full RFP, check out the GAVI homepage (www.vaccinealliance.org). The link to the RFP is on the very top of the page.

PneumoADIP is excited about this development. There are many overlaps between Hib and pneumococcal disease that make PneumoADIP eager to collaborate with whomever GAVI selects to lead this important initiative. As with pneumococcal disease, efforts to establish the burden of disease locally require clinical, laboratory, and epidemiologic capacities to identify patients with meningitis and pneumonia, collect the appropriate specimens, and test them using sensitive lab techniques. As a result, there should be considerable opportunity for collaboration between PneumoADIP and GAVI’s Hib initiative on disease burden studies and surveillance and in other areas.

There’s not much time to respond so if you are interested or someone you know is interested in applying, we encourage you to check out the RFP. Opportunities like this one don’t come around everyday!

On January 17 and 18 th PneumoADIP-supported pneumococcal disease investigators met in Dhaka, Bangladesh to present results from their ongoing surveillance and to share ideas for potential improvements. This was the second annual meeting of these investigators sponsored by the World Health Organization’s Immunizations, Vaccines and Biologicals division. The meeting brought together representatives from 25 countries on 5 continents: investigators from 5 surveillance networks; recipients of PneumoADIP’s Small Grants; and WHO, PneumoADIP and country representatives.

The meeting generated intensive, productive discussions among the participants. Meeting participants reviewed progress in each surveillance network since September 2003 and assessed the comparability of data collected by different networks. They discussed future directions for networks and collaborators, including ways in which surveillance could be improved and expanded in the various settings in which investigators are working. In addition to research methods and logistics, attendees talked about ways for investigators to ensure that their research results reach policy makers in their countries.

Overall, the meeting was successful in furthering the patterns of collaboration between networks and PneumoADIP, and determining ways in which PneumoADIP can help surveillance networks become more effective.

Two bacterial surveillance studies conducted in different settings on opposite coasts of sub-Saharan Africa report both high incidence and high mortality caused by S. pneumoniae infections for children under 5 years old, and especially for children less than 2 years of age. Investigators working in an urban district hospital in Burkina Faso found that the pneumococcus was the cause of 52% of child deaths due to bacterial meningitis. And in a rural district hospital in Kenya , 49% of children who died on the day of hospital admission had a pneumococcal infection.

Both studies emphasize that their reported incidence and mortality statistics underestimate the true burden of pneumococcal disease due to limitations of inpatient disease surveillance in documenting the more numerous outpatient cases and deaths. The authors of both studies call attention to the need for prevention; even in the best case scenario where the sick child is able to attend a hospital equipped with microbiological facilities, by the time the child is diagnosed with the disease one to two days after admission, all too often the child is already dead.

For a full scientific report on the Kenya study, read the January 6, 2005 issue of NEJM (N Engl J Med. 2005 Jan 6;352(1):39-47).

For a full scientific report on the Burkina Faso study, read the January 1, 2005 issue of CID (Clin Infect Dis. 2005 Jan 1;40(1):17-25).

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is currently actively recruiting for the position of Senior Program Officer, Child Health.  The job description can be accessed, along with the full instructions for how to apply, at the following web address:

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/AboutUs/Jobs/default.htm

Due to the number of inquiries, they ask that potential candidates not contact foundation staff other than through the web-based application process.