The Merck Company Foundation has committed a total of $4.4 million in funding for the Merck Vaccine Network – Africa (MVN-A) through 2011. To date, more than 510 health professionals in Kenya, Mali, Uganda and Zambia have completed MVN-A training, including 431 health professionals in the four years from 2005 through 2008.  This training covers a wide range of topics, including management training on storing and handling vaccines safely; forecasting community needs to ensure an adequate vaccine supply; planning and conducting disease surveillance activities; and providing supportive supervision to lower-level staff. Trainees have returned to their home medical facilities to share their expertise and knowledge with fellow health care workers. For example, the Kenyan Ministry of Health, supported by GAVI Alliance funding, has leveraged the management expertise of MVN-A trainees to cascade immunization training to other cadres of health workers in the western part of the country.

MVN-A training is also helping to improve the capacity of national immunization programs in practical ways. In Kenya, amid the conflict following the December 2007 general election, MVN-A trainees in the Ministry of Health worked to coordinate health services support, including mass immunization campaigns to prevent outbreaks of measles and polio for large camps of internally displaced persons. In Mali, the Ministry of Health leveraged the MVN-A program to help train immunization managers in preparation for the accelerated introduction of a new Hib pentavalent vaccine (DTP-HepB+Hib), funded by GAVI. Since its successful expedited introduction in 2005, more than 675,000 Malian children have received this new combination vaccine.

In 2007, the MVN-A programs in Kenya and Mali published their experiences, progress and findings in peer-reviewed journals, The East African Medical Journal  (Kenya) and Education for Health (Mali).

MVN-A Performance Data Summary 2004-2008  

	2008	2007	2006	2005	2004
Merck investment in MVN-A (US$)	800,000	1M	400,000	400,000	400,000
Number of health care professionals trained through MVN-A	142	97	103	89	81

The content on this page was last modified on September 15, 2009.

Merck & Co., Inc., Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA, and Schering-Plough Corporation, Kenilworth, NJ, USA, are now one company. We have combined our global operations under the name Merck & Co., Inc. We are working to update our corporate responsibility Web site to reflect our new, combined, global organization.