Niger is experiencing a spike in meningitis cases, and though the country has seasonal outbreaks every year, activity is tracking higher than in previous seasons, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today in an outbreak announcement.
The epicenter is Zinder region in southeastern Niger. Since Nov 1, 2022, and through Jan 27, a total of 559 cases have been reported, 18 of them fatal, for a case-fatality rate of 2.3%. For comparison, Niger reported 231 cases over the same period the previous year.
The vast majority (93.7%) of the 111 lab-confirmed cases in this season's outbreak involve Neisseria meningitidis serogroup C. More than half of the cases involve males, and people younger than 20 are the hardest-hit group (96.3% of cases).
Health officials have launched campaigns using the trivalent ACW meningococcal vaccine.
The WHO said Zinder region borders Nigeria's Jigawa state, where a similar meningitis outbreak is occurring. Population displacement and other humanitarian issues in the region pose a risk of meningitis spread to other West African countries, the agency added. It assessed the risk to Niger as high, to the region as moderate, and to the rest of the world as low.
Part of Niger is in Africa's meningitis belt, and epidemics typically follow a season that runs from January through June. A large meningitis outbreak in 2015, which also involved serogroup C, resulted in about 10,000 cases.