Niger health authorities said, “they had found a fake version of a meningitis vaccine after launching a vaccination campaign to inoculate 5 million children against the disease”. 

The Ministry of Public Health Dr. Idi Illiassou Mainassara said the bogus vaccine, Mencevax ACWY, had been discovered during a “routine inspection” in the Niger capital city of Niamey. 

So an investigation is underway to try to find how many of the fake vaccines have been used which was marked as having been manufactured in December 2016, with an end-date for use by November 2021. 

Dr. Mainassara in a statement asked doctors to be vigilant over this “counterfeit” vaccine. 

Niger is a country that lies in the so-called “meningitis belt” stretching from Senegal in West Africa to Ethiopia in the east. 

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