WHO/Europe will hold this workshop to review progress in implementing the global roadmap “Defeating meningitis by 2030” and to review regional priorities, disease burden and vaccine introduction status.
Participants will include representatives of national immunization programmes, epidemiology departments of national public health centres, national bacteriological reference laboratories and national immunization technical advisory groups from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Representatives of the WHO Collaborating Center for Bacterial Meningitis, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will also share experiences in developing and implementing national strategies for defeating meningitis, with a particular focus on surveillance and vaccine introductions.
Participants will also discuss:
- the experiences of countries from Central Asia in investigating and responding to bacterial meningitis outbreaks;
- approaches to strengthening meningitis surveillance to better define disease burden, inform decisions on meningococcal vaccine introductions and improve outbreak detection and response; and
- define next steps to generate national commitment towards the agenda to defeat meningitis.