While the international community is focused on the H1N1 virus, West Africa is experiencing a meningitis epidemic that could be easily contained but has already killed 1,900 persons and infected more than 56,000.

Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) (aka Doctors without Borders) have launched one of the largest vaccination campaigns in history, in collaboration with the World Health Organization and Chad, Niger and Nigeria governments.

In order to prevent the epidemic to extend, 270 groups of MSF are on the "battle field", each group being able to vaccinate 1500 persons daily. A minimum of 7 million persons need to be vaccinated for the mass immunization campaign to be efficient.