How much money is being spent every year responding to meningitis outbreaks and epidemics?
This is difficult to say. A very conservative estimate, looking only at the cost of medical treatment and reactive vaccination, is probably a minimum of around US$20 million in an average year in Africa’s meningitis belt. This does not include the cost of lives lost or loss of earnings for those chronically impaired by epidemics. Nor does it include the cost of not providing other essential health services because epidemic response takes over the health care systems during the 6–7 months of an epidemic. If antibiotics can be given during outbreaks to limit the spread and severity of the disease, why not use antibiotics instead of creating new vaccines, since the drugs already exist and are probably cheaper? It seems that US$70 million could buy you a lot of antibiotics. Why not spend the money on that and make a difference right now? Even with aggressive therapy, the mortality and morbidity rate from bacterial meningitis is high. That is why vaccines have been so valuable in the preven
