It was made by generic drug maker Serum Institute of India and cost 50 U.S. cents per injection. Beginning in Burkina Faso in 2010, it has been given to 215 million people across Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Togo and Gambia. The vaccination campaign has resulted in near-elimination of serogroup A meningitis from the participating countries. Treatment
Persons with confirmed N. meningitidis infection should be hospitalized immediately for treatment with antibiotics. Because meningococcal disease can disseminate very rapidly, a single dose of intramuscular antibiotic is often given at the earliest possible opportunity, even before hospitalization, if disease symptoms look suspicious enough. Third-generation cephalosporin antibiotics (i.e. cefotaxime, ceftriaxone) should be used to treat a suspected or culture-proven meningococcal infection before antibiotic susceptibility results are available. Clinical practice guidelines endorse empirical treatment in the event a lumbar puncture to collect cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for laboratory testing cannot first be performed. Antibiotic treatment may affect the results of microbiology tests, but a diagnosis may be made on the basis of blood-cultures and clinical examination. Epidemiology
N. meningitidis is a major cause of illness, developmental impairment and death during childhood in industrialized countries and has been responsible for epidemics in Africa and in Asia. Every year, about 2,500 to 3,500 people become infected with N. meningitidis in the US, with a frequency of about 1 in 100,000. Children younger than 5 years are at greatest risk, followed by teenagers of high school age.
A comparison with MC58 showed that four genes are uniquely present in H44/76 and nine genes are only present in MC58. Of all ORFs in H44/76, 2,317 (93%) show more than 99% sequence identity.The complete genome sequence of strain NMA510612 (serogroup A) consists of one circular chromosome with a size of 2,188,020 bp, and the average GC content is 51.5%. The chromosome is predicted to possess 4 rRNA operons, 163 insertion elements (IS), 59 tRNAs, and 2,462 ORFs.There is a public database available for N. meningitidis core genome multilocus sequence typing (cMILST). Available at: https://pubmlst.org/bigsdb?db=pubmlst_neisseria_seqdef

Genetic transformation
Genetic transformation is the process by which a recipient bacterial cell takes up DNA from a neighboring cell and integrates this DNA into the recipients genome by recombination. In N. meningitidis, DNA transformation requires the presence of short DNA sequences (9–10 mers residing in coding regions) of the donor DNA. These sequences are called DNA uptake sequences (DUSs). Specific recognition of these sequences is mediated by a type IV pilin. In N. meningitidis DUSs occur at a significantly higher density in genes involved in DNA repair and recombination (as well as in restriction-modification and replication) than in other annotated gene groups. The over-representation of DUS in DNA repair and recombination genes may reflect the benefit of maintaining the integrity of the DNA repair and recombination machinery by preferentially taking up genome maintenance genes, that could replace their damaged counterparts in the recipient cell.N. meningititis colonizes the nasopharyngeal mucosa, which is rich in macrophages.