Meningitis epidemic threatens West Africa

International health officials are scrambling, without much success, to find meningitis C vaccines as an outbreak of the child-killing disease threatens to balloon into an epidemic. The first large-scale outbreak of the C strain in decades has this year killed 800 of 12,000 infected people in Nigeria and in neighboring Niger, according to the World Health Organisation.  In 2013 and 2014, deaths numbered 128 out of 2,046 people who fell ill, WHO said, indicating the infection rate has soared and could grow much higher in 2016. "We've never seen this before with meningitis C," William A. Perea, coordinator of WHO's Control of Epidemic Diseases Unit, said of the resurgence of the strain. The bacterial infection mostly targets children, inflames the brain and spinal cord and kills half those infected if left untreated. Survivors can suffer brain damage, deafness, constant fatigue and neurological and emotional difficulties. West Africa's biggest epidemic, in 1996, hit four countries, infected a quarter million people and killed 25,000. It was caused predominantly by meningitis A. Since 2010, the meningitis A conjugate vaccine — used across 15 sub-Saharan countries in the "meningitis belt" stretching from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east — has reduced infection rates. But it does not protect against the equally deadly C strain. WHO, and partners including Doctors Without Borders, say they want to build a 5 million-dose stockpile before next year's meningitis season, which runs from January to June during the dry hot months that force people indoors and enable transmission. While the Indian-manufactured meningitis A vaccine costs around 60 cents, the conjugate vaccine for meningitis C used in the United States costs $30 to $100 a dose. Two doses for babies provide 10 years' protection, according to a news agency.