Meningitis halts refugee repatriation to Sudan

The repatriation of Sudanese refugees from northwestern Uganda, which was suspended in January after a meningitis outbreak in the region, cannot resume until the disease is contained, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Wednesday.

"We halted the repatriation exercise on 19 January because of meningitis," Roberta Russo, UNHCR spokesperson in Kampala, said. "The situation has not changed so we do not know when we shall resume."

At least 14,000 refugees have been repatriated to southern Sudan since the signing in January 2005 of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended two decades of war between the Sudanese government and former rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army.

Since the meningitis outbreak was reported, 38 people have died from the disease in northwestern Uganda and another 930 are infected. On Wednesday, Uganda's commissioner for health services, Sam Okware, said a massive vaccination campaign was under way to stem the spread.

However, Okware added, the disease was not yet contained in Arua District, near the border with Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo - where many of the 150,000 Sudanese refugees in Uganda live.

Patrick Anguzu, Arua district head of health services, said 27 people had died in Arua by Tuesday out of 930 cases reported in treatment centres.

According to Okware, the outbreak, which was first reported in northeastern Uganda earlier in the year where 11 people died, was of the A and C strains. Up to 400,000 people were being targeted for vaccination, including 200,000 in Arua alone. "We are targeting all people between the ages of two and 30 years because those older are expected to be resistant to the disease," he told IRIN.

Treatment centres, he added, had been set up all over the northwestern region and medical personnel from the capital, Kampala, were on the ground to help fight the outbreak.

Eleven people died of meningitis in the district of Kotido in Karamoja in the first week of the year, but Okware said the outbreak there had been contained. "There has been no reduction in Arua where the disease has spread to 19 sub-counties; and it is unravelling in the other areas of West Nile. Overcrowding is one of the main causes of the epidemic in the region," he said.

The northwestern Ugandan region of West Nile lies in the African meningitis belt - a corridor that runs through northern Uganda from West Nile region to the restive Karamoja region. The belt extends through an area of sub-Saharan Africa from Senegal through 15 countries, with an estimated total population of 300 million, according to the World Health Organization. Epidemics occur in seasonal cycles between November and June, depending on the location and climate of the country, and decline rapidly with the rainy season.

The disease is a fatal infection caused by bacteria that affects the brain and spinal cord. However, if diagnosed early and treated, many patients recover fully. Early symptoms include fever, followed by a rash and vomiting. Patients suffer stiffness before unconsciousness and death. The bacteria are transmitted through droplets of respiratory or throat secretions.

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