World Meningitis Day

Meningitis is a devastating disease and remains a major public health challenge. Together with sepsis, meningitis is estimated to cause more deaths in children under 5 years of age than malaria. Low and middle income countries suffer the greatest burden of disease.

We have developed a website dedicated to sharing information on meningitis which is launched today to coincide with World Meningitis day. The website has the aim to guide and inform users about meningitis with information ranging from knowing the symptoms of disease, the organisms that cause meningitis to how infection can be prevented through vaccination. In the long term, we also plan to provide information that might be relevant to laboratory personnel including manuals guiding in the use of diagnostic assays.

This body of work is key to our MEVacP project (Molecular Epidemiology for Vaccination Policy) funded by the Department of Health and Social Care using UK Aid and managed by NIHR.  In this project we aim to: i) Promote awareness of meningitis, ii) Improve surveillance and our understanding of the epidemiology of meningitis and, iii) Prevent infection through vaccination.