Meningitis kills 401 since October

Meningitis has killed 401 people out of 2433 cases in Burkina Faso since the beginning of the 2002-2003 meningitis season in late October, Souleymane Sanou, head of meningitis control in the health ministry said on Thursday. Sanou, speaking in an interview on the national radio, said analyses of the cases show persistance of the new W135 meningitis strain which was first reported a year ago. Before that time, Burkina Faso was only affected by the A and C strains. Five health districts out of 53 in the country, had been declared meningitis epidemic areas, the official said. These included Batie in the South west, Manga, Po in the south Pama and Diapaga in the east. Each of these districts had reported 10 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. "They are epidemic spots and we are undertaking in the next days a reactive vaccination of people in affected areas," Sanou said. Some 150,000 doses of the 500,000 trivalent (A,C,W135) vaccine doses sent last week by the World Health Organization (WHO) to contain the epidemic would be allocated to these areas, he added. He added that the decision by the government to resort to "reactive vaccination" was due to the limited quantity of vaccine doses available, which would not be enough to conduct a preventive campaign for Burkina Faso's 11 million people. In December the government requested the WHO to assist and enough W135 vaccine doses to face any meningitis upsurge when first cases appeared. WHO was able to secure 500,000 doses for Burkina out of three million for all the countries of the African meningitis belt which range from Ethiopia in the east to Senegal in the west. The new W135 meningitis strain has killed 1474 persons out of 12794 cases in Burkina Faso since last year. Officials said 40 percent of the population carry the meningitis strain but it particularly fatally affects those with weak body systems. Meningitis is a disease whose symptoms include nausea and headache and which can progress rapidly to cause serious neurological damage, deafness, coma and death. Unless it is treated quickly, up to half of those infected die. Even with treatment, as many as 20 percent of patients do not survive.