‘Declare pneumococcal meningitis outbreak an epidemic’ — Prof. Binka

 The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Prof. Fred Binka, has made a passionate appeal to the government to declare the outbreak of the pneumococcal meningitis an epidemic.

He said this must be done as a matter of urgency in order to elicit the required response to stop the spread of the deadly disease and prevent the situation from getting out of hand.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic on the margins of a two-day ‘Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP) Closure Conference” held in Addis Ababa, Prof. Binka pointed out that in an epidemic situation, treatment of the disease would be free.

Epidemic response

He said further that declaring an epidemic would also demand that people were alerted and attention heightened to look out for the disease.

Health staff at all levels would also have to be retrained on how to diagnose the disease and laboratories would be required to determine the sensitive antibodies that could clear the bacteria.

“You declare an epidemic to save lives. How many more will die before we declare an epidemic? he queried.

Deadly strain

“The problem is that the Streptococcus Pneumonia (pneumococcal meningitis) is so deadly that even with treatment, about 40 per cent of people infected will still die”, Prof. Binka stated.

He explained that “Meningitis A disease is known to have an epidemic nature, but the Streptococcus Pneumonia strain is so deadly that every government can decide when to declare an epidemic”.

Prof. Binka cited, for instance, that although the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that an epidemic is declared in situations where 30 cases are recorded per 100,000 of the population, Niger reduced this to five cases per 100,000 when the country had an outbreak in order to deal with the situation.

According to him “when the number of cases of the disease recorded at a location increases at the same time the following year, as far as epidemiology is concerned, it is an epidemic.”

Hence, the government should have declared the Brong Ahafo Region an epidemic zone right from when the disease was reported, because the districts where the cases were reported had never had any meningitis cases.

“We should not wait for the WHO to declare an epidemic with the hope of getting financial support from the organisation, as this will not happen, he said.