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Meningitis Kills 1,600 in Africa
Outbreaks of meningitis have claimed 1,606 lives across sub-Saharan Africa since the beginning of the year and will likely kill more people in coming weeks, a U.N. health official said Thursday.
Separate epidemics in five African countries Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad, Ethiopia and Niger have already infected 17,680 people, Max Hardiman said by telephone from the headquarters of the United Nations' World Health Organization in Geneva.
Meningitis, an infection of membranes that protect the brain and spinal cord, often appears in Africa during dry seasons, frequently raging throughout a geographic belt stretching from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east.
With treatment, only 1 percent of infected people die.
Africa suffered its worst outbreak in 1996 when more than 150,000 people most of them children were infected in several countries and 16,000 died. Another 16,000 suffered brain damage or paralysis.
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