Africa meningitis deaths near 1500 for first nine months of 2013
The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa recently released its updated Meningitis Weekly Bulletin, which shows the number of cases and fatalities from meningitis in 19 countries from the “African Meningitis Belt” and it shows that for the first 39 weeks there were 16,385 cases including 1460 deaths.
The overall lethality rate for this time frame is 8.9%.
Nearly half (48%) of the total cases were reported from The Democratic Republic of the Congo (7,880) that resulted in 712 deaths.
Burkina Faso reported 2,409 cases, being the country with the second most cases.
The countries of the African Meningitis Belt face outbreaks of the deadly bacterial disease every year.
According to the global health non-profit organization, PATH, about 450 million people are at risk of the deadly disease. Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan, and Ethiopia are considered hyperendemic, meaning populations in these countries are at the highest risk of developing meningitis.
This region is not only prone to meningitis, but also very prone to epidemics with other infectious diseases such as malaria.
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