Eliminating meningitis saves 5,000 children a year, say officials

Up to 5,000 children under the age of five will be saved in Uganda every year after a vaccine halted mortality rates from the deadly strain of meningitis that has been infecting up to 30,000 people in the east African country, officials said on 13 March.

Sam Zaramba, the director-general of the health ministry, told IRIN that Haemophilus influenzae type b – commonly known as Hib - has been virtually wiped out in the country five years after a vaccine was introduced in nationwide immunisation programmes.

“Before we introduced the vaccine, we were recording up to 30,000 cases every year, with about 17 percent deaths. But in the past 12 months, we have not recorded any cases, meaning that we have eliminated the killer disease,” Zaramba told IRIN by telephone.

He said the health ministry, with support from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), had issued up to 16.5 million doses of Hib vaccines in 2002 and by 2006, it was indicative that the disease was ebbing away.

“If this continues, we shall see the same trend that polio has taken in this country. We are just waiting for certification from WHO [UN World Health Organization] that polio has been eliminated from Uganda. We have done the same with measles,” he said.

According to GAVI, the incidence rate dropped by 85 percent within four years and fell to zero in the fifth year. "Thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Ugandan Ministry of Health, the WHO, UN Children’s Fund and other partners, we can applaud a true success in controlling this deadly disease that has too often claimed so many lives," a GAVI statement quoted the Alliance’s executive secretary Julian Lob-Levyt as saying.

Zaramba said the elimination of the three diseases said to be among the main killers of children in the country was an indication that it was on course to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Hib is a leading cause of pneumonia and meningitis, an inflammation of the lining covering the brain and spinal cord. Each year, it kills about 400,000 children under five, mostly in the developing world.

The infection is also responsible for approximately three million cases of serious illnesses resulting in long-term consequences such as deafness, paralysis, mental retardation and learning disabilities.

“The introduction of the Hib vaccine has now completely changed the epidemiology of bacterial meningitis in Uganda as a public health problem among children,” said Adeodata Kekitiinwa, director of the HIV/AIDS Paediatric Clinic at the country’s main referral hospital of Mulago.

The Uganda results, according to GAVI, follow similar results in Bangladesh, Kenya, Chile, the Gambia, the UK and USA. These studies have all concluded that the Hib vaccine cuts the incidence of disease by 88 percent or more within three to five years.

However, Zaramba said malaria was still a leading killer of children, and gastro-enteritis or the inflammation of the gastro-intestinal tract, other respiratory tract infections and paediatric HIV/AIDS, were still a problem.

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