Background
The second major program highlighted in this report concerns bacterial meningitis in Asian children. The Program seeks to document the burden of disease from three important causes of invasive bacterial infection: Haemophilus influenzae type b, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis. It is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Children's Vaccine Program at PATH, Merck, SmithKline Beecham, Wyeth-Lederle, and the IVI. This Program is the longest running and most developed of the IVI's many programs.

In Asian countries, there are limited clinical, epidemiologic and laboratory data to characterize the full impact of childhood meningitis and other invasive bacterial diseases. Furthermore, previous studies have used a variety of non-standardized methods to identify, diagnosis and analyze patients with suspected meningitis.

Goal
The goal of this program is to assess the meningitis disease burden related to the three pathogens listed above among children aged < 5 years in China, Korea and Vietnam.

Program
This is a coordinated, multi-country program, using common protocols, that entails active surveillance of infants and children to detect bacterial meningitis and to estimate the incidence of meningitis due to Haemophilus influenzae type b, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis. Enrolled patients undergo standardized microbiology laboratory testing of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cultures and blood cultures taken at the time of evaluation in each medical facility. Since the beginning of the program, activities in each of the field sites has been coordinated by IVI staff in cooperation with scientific and technical staff at the UCLA Center for Vaccine Research headed by Prof. Joel Ward.