Report states meningococcal disease causes for 170,000 deaths annually worldwide

Have the meningococcal meningitis vaccine – that’s the advice to Australian travellers heading to northern Africa in coming weeks following large-scale epidemics of the deadly disease across continents ‘meningitis belt’. One of the most aggressive of all bacterial infections, the disease has struck in numerous ‘belt’ countries this year, including major recent outbreaks in Burkina Faso (4800 infected, 500 dead), Chad (2800, 130), Benin (700, 60), and Ghana (102, 16). Read article