Meningitis kills more than 400

Meningitis has killed 403 people between 1 January and 7 March 2004 in Burkina Faso, where 2,060 cases of the disease have been reported. According to the Ministry of Health, the disease has reached epidemic proportions in two of the country's 53 districts – Diebougou in the south west and Nanoro in the central region. “Nationally we are not talking of epidemic proportions yet,” Dr Souleymane Sanou, head of the diseases control directorate (DLM), told IRIN on Tuesday. He explained that a vaccination programme run from 5 to 9 March targeted the ‘A’ strain of the virus, prevalent in Diebougou, but that lab tests had revealed that a newer, more virulent strain – W135 – was prevalent in Nanoro. Sanou told IRIN that health authorities had made an appeal for donations of a new trivalent meningitis vaccine, which targets existing African strains of the disease as well as the new W135 bacterial strain. There are currently no supplies of the trivalent vaccine, which retails for around US$12 per shot, available in Burkina Faso. A special consortium made up of the World Health Organisation, the UN Children’s Agency UNICEF, International Red Cross, Crescent Societies and Doctors without Borders holds stocks of some six million doses of the trivalent vaccine. Countries can make applications for the consortium to provide the trivalent vaccine only when epidemic conditions have been reached and tests prove that the W135 strain has been detected. Meningitis is a viral or bacterial infection that affects the fluid surrounding the spinal chord and the brain. Viral meningitis is less severe, though bacterial meningitis can be harder to treat and can rapidly lead to brain damage, a coma and death. Early symptoms include fever, nausea and headache. Each year, during the dry harmattan season which runs from October through to May, meningitis claims thousands of lives in the so-called African meningitis belt that stretches from Senegal in the west to Sudan in the east. According to the UK’s Department for International Development, meningitis killed around 1,500 people in 2002 in Burkina Faso alone.