The Meningitis Vaccine Project is an effort to eliminate the meningitis epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa by developing a new meningococcal vaccine. The meningitis problem in that area is caused by a strain of meningitis called "meningitis A", which is present only in the African meningitis belt. In June 2010 various sources announced that they had developed MenAfriVac, which is an inexpensive, safe, and highly effective vaccine which is likely to stop the epidemic as quickly as anyone had ever hoped that it would.
The project marked the first time that medical research had developed a vaccine to combat a disease which is endemic to and only a problem for Africa.
The project began in 2001 when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the World Health Organization and the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) a US $70 million seed grant to begin research.