Response Strategies against Meningitis Epidemics after Elimination of Serogroup A Meningococci, Niger
نویسندگان
چکیده
To inform epidemic response strategies for the African meningitis belt after a meningococcal serogroup A conjugate vaccine was introduced in 2010, we compared the effectiveness and efficiency of meningitis surveillance and vaccine response strategies at district and health area levels using various thresholds of weekly incidence rates. We analyzed reports of suspected cases from 3 regions in Niger during 2002-2012 (154,392 health area weeks), simulating elimination of serogroup A meningitis by excluding health area years with identification of such cases. Effectiveness was highest for health area surveillance and district vaccination (58-366 cases; thresholds 7-20 cases/100,000 doses), whereas efficiency was optimized with health area vaccination (5.6-7.7 cases/100,000 doses). District-level intervention prevented <6 cases (0.2 cases/100,000 doses). Reducing the delay between epidemic signal and vaccine protection by 2 weeks doubled efficiency. Subdistrict surveillance and response might be most appropriate for meningitis epidemic response after elimination of serogroup A meningitis.
منابع مشابه
Serogroup-Specific Characteristics of Localized Meningococcal Meningitis Epidemics in Niger 2002–2012 and 2015: Analysis of Health Center Level Surveillance Data
To compare dynamics of localized meningitis epidemics (LE) by meningococcal (Nm) serogroup, we analyzed a surveillance database of suspected and laboratory-confirmed Nm cases from 373 health areas (HA) of three regions in Niger during 2002-2012 and one region concerned by NmC epidemics during 2015. We defined LE as HA weekly incidence rates of ≥20 suspected cases per 100,000 during ≥2 weeks and...
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