The collaborations behind the meningococcal vaccine

Résumé En

In the 1960s the WHO launched a project to produce an effective vaccine to combat cerebrospinal meningitis, considered a significant public health problem in Africa. The production of this vaccine implied the collaboration of several organisms under the aegis of the WHO: the Institut Mérieux in Lyon, a team from the Institut de Médecine Tropicale du Service de Santé des Armées in Marseille, and the Laboratory of Hygiene of the Department of National Health and Welfare in Ottawa. This presentation will cover a part of this history of the production of the meningococcal A vaccine, focusing on the collaborations engaged in the project. We will analyze the period from 1962 to 1967, involving the production of a prototype vaccine by Mérieux and the first field trial in Yako, Upper Volta. To analyze this episode, we deploy the schema proposed by Joan H. Fujimura. Thus we will explain how the project was oriented towards Doable Problems in order to explain how the different protagonists were mobilized and their work aligned in order to produce and test a vaccine. Indeed, a number of elements seemed to stand in the way of successfully producing a vaccine, and so the collaboration of the different actors under the aegis of the WHO provides interesting lessons about how to manage this kind of project.