Help requested against meningitis

Burkina Faso's government has asked the World Health Organisation (WHO) for help in its fight against meningitis. The request coincides with the start of the 2002-2003 meningitis season. The Ministry of Health reported that 123 cases of the disease, 16 of them fatal, were reported by the country's 53 health districts from 9 to 15 December. None of the districts had reached "warning stage" (five cases for 100,000 inhabitants) or epidemic stage (10 cases for 100,000 inhabitants), Minister of Health Alain Yoda said on Friday at a news conference in the capital, Ouagadougou. "However, there is a regular increase in the number of suspected cases since November 2002," he added. The minister said analyses of the first cases revealed the "persistence" of a new strain, W135, which killed 1,474 persons out of 12,794 infected between February and May 2002. "Due to the non-availability of the W135 vaccine, the strategy of an early vaccination campaign has not been carried out in the year 2002," Yoda explained. "There is a risk of a W135 meningitis epidemic in the year 2003 since populations have not been immunized, while there is no sign that the other strains will not occur." The health minister called on WHO to provide Burkina Faso "as soon as possible" with one million doses of W135. He said 500,000 doses ordered by the government had not yet arrived. Until last year the dominant strains of meningitis were the A and C varieties for which vaccines exist. Only small quantities of Tetravalent, which cures and prevents the W135 strain, are available on the market and its high price -US $8 per dose- makes it unaffordable for people in most African countries. WHO and its partners - Doctors without borders, UNICEF and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies - launched an urgent appeal in late September for 11 million euros (US $10.8 million) to contain potential meningitis outbreaks in Africa. The appeal was made at the end of a meeting in Ouagadougou at which strategies to fight meningitis and secure cheap vaccines were discussed. WHO said at the time that the emergence of the W-135 strain in West Africa earlier this year had given renewed urgency to the search for a more effective and affordable vaccine. It said five million doses of Tetravalent were needed immediately and about 50 million over the next five years but it could only purchase two million doses - at US $2.75 each - for 2003 because of financial limitations. That price was still too expensive for African countries, according to WHO and its partners, which said negotiations aimed at having it reduced to $1 per dose were continuing. Meningitis appears each year in the Sahelian belt (the countries just south of the Sahara) at the onset of the dry season - December/January - when the dusty harmattan wind blows southward from the Sahara. It causes severe brain damage and sometimes death.