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Marc Laforce

Marc Laforce

F. Marc LaForce, MD
Project Director, PATH

Marc LaForce joined the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP) as director in August 2001. He earned his doctor of medicine degree from Seton Hall College of Medicine and Dentistry, N.J., and completed his internal medicine and infectious disease training on the Harvard Service at Boston City Hospital. He is board-certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Marc LaForce has held research and academic positions at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He served as Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in the Meningitis and Special Pathogen units at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and on immunization advisory committees for the CDC and the American College of Physicians. From 1994 to 2001 he led the Steering Committee on Epidemiology and Field Research for the World Health Organization's vaccine cluster, and from 1998 to 2001 he was president of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board.

Marc LaForce has published over 150 papers and book chapters in the areas of pulmonary defense mechanisms, clinical infectious diseases, epidemiology, and vaccinology.
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New Protection Against Meningitis

by Marc Laforce
Marc Laforce
F. Marc LaForce, MD Project Director, PATH Marc LaForce joined the Meningiti
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 Monday, 17 January 2011 Category Logistics and programmatic issues related to new vaccine introduction 2 Comments

Starting this week, families in sub-Saharan Africa will finally get a long-term solution against a deadly disease. A new meningitis vaccine called MenAfriVac™ is reaching millions of people in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger beginning today, and neighboring countries will soon follow. This is the first vaccine ever developed to provide sustained protection against the specific strain that causes most outbreaks of bacterial meningitis in Africa’s meningitis belt. More than 450 million people are at risk of meningococcal A meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitidis, which can explode in large epidemics.  The disease kills one in ten people who get sick, and leaves a quarter of survivors deaf or with other severe disabilities.

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