WHO issues warning over meningitis

Sudan is at risk of an outbreak of the highly contagious disease meningitis and additional funds are required to purchase vaccines and antibiotics, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned. Meningitis cases had been reported in the eastern Sudanese states of Gadaref and Blue Nile, bordering Ethiopia. Between 22 January and 2 February 2005, a total of 169 cases, including 23 deaths, were reported from both states, WHO said. Localised vaccination campaigns were ongoing since 1 February, targeting 70 percent of the population in affected villages in both states. "The Sudanese government has responded quickly and sent in vaccination teams straight away and the number of reported cases has been falling since last week," Dick Thompson, spokesman of the communicable diseases section of the WHO in Geneva, told IRIN on Friday. Meningitis is an infection of the meninges, the thin lining that surrounds the brain and the spinal cord, and is caused by germs that are often found in airborne dust. "Risks for meningitis outbreaks in Sudan, including the three Darfur states, are rather high," the WHO warned in a health statement on Sudan. "Although, besides the outbreak in Gadaref and Blue Nile, no meningitis cases have been reported anywhere else in Sudan so far, it is only the beginning of the meningitis season," Thompson said. "The important thing is to identify the disease early and start vaccination campaigns rapidly." The WHO is supporting the Sudanese Ministry of Health to raise supplementary funds to purchase the meningococcal-meningitis vaccine and antibiotics to establish a buffer stock in the event of widespread meningitis outbreak in Sudan. Overcrowded housing situations and large population displacements due to crisis, pilgrimages and regional markets facilitate the transmission of Neisseria meningitides, the most important meningitis-causing bacteria which has the potential to cause epidemics, according to WHO. Continuous population movements at borders between Sudan and Chad, where an outbreak of meningitis is ongoing, had increased the risk of the expansion of the disease into western Sudan. According to WHO, health workers had completed a 12-day drive to vaccinate 72,000 people against meningitis following an outbreak of the disease in three overcrowded camps in eastern Chad, harbouring Sudanese refugees from Darfur, which left one person dead. The first known meningitis outbreak in Sudan was reported back in 1950-51 affecting 72,162 people. The second was in 1988-89 with 38,805 cases and 2,770 deaths. The most recent occurred in 1999 where about 33,216 cases and 2,306 deaths were reported.