Expert teams tackle Hoima meningitis outbreak

The Ugandan government and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have dispatched a team of experts to Hoima District in western Uganda to contain an outbreak of meningitis, which has caused the deaths of at least five people in the past week. Collins Mwesigye, WHO's water and community sanitation adviser in Uganda, told IRIN on Monday that the combined agency and health ministry team had already begun to monitor and prevent the outbreak from spreading into as yet unaffected areas of the district. "We know there is a problem out there. The issue now is the localisation of the outbreak [to contain the disease]," Mwesigye said. "But we don't want to create an alarm over the outbreak, because it is being handled," he added. Meningitis, an infection of the fluid of the spinal cord and the fluid that surrounds the brain, is usually caused by a viral or bacterial infection, according to health sources. The symptoms and signs of the disease include high fever, headache and stiff neck, vomiting and - in extreme cases - convulsions. The viral form is generally less severe and may be resolved without specific treatment, while bacterial meningitis can be quite severe and may result in brain damage, hearing loss, or learning disability. This is the first time a major meningitis outbreak has been reported in Uganda since 2 September 1996, when WHO reported an outbreak in at least four districts. The government-owned New Vision newspaper reported on Monday that, of 15 patients suspected of having meningitis in Hoima during the week ending 17 March, at least five had died. As of 22 March, the WHO and health ministry team on the ground had recorded some 23 cases and three deaths, according to Mwesigye. Two more deaths had since been reported, he added. Laboratory investigations of samples from Hoima had confirmed the two most deadly strains of meningitis disease, both of which kill rapidly, The New Vision reported, citing a weekly disease-surveillance report by the Ministry of Health dated 17 March. Initially, health investigators detected a pneumococcal meningitis (caused by a type of bacterium known as Streptococcus pneumoniae), but last week confirmed meningococcal meningitis (caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis), the report stated. Some forms of bacterial meningitis are contagious (as the bacteria spread through the exchange of respiratory and throat secretions, such as coughing) but none are as contagious as those that cause the common cold or influenza ('flu), and they are not spread by casual contact or by simply breathing the air where an infected person has been. Treatment is usually carried out with a number of effective antibiotics, but it is important that it take place at an early stage of infection to reduce the risk of death, according to medical sources. Mathew Emer, District Health Services Director for Hoima, said "many of the dead reported to the hospital late", The New Vision reported. Emer urged people who contracted the disease to report early for treatment.