Meningitis death toll tops 2,000
While swine flu captures most of the health-related headlines in the U.S., most Americans are probably not aware that a meningitis outbreak in Nigeria has already claimed over 2,000 lives.
Reuters quotes the Nigerian Health Ministry as saying that deaths from the epidemic have risen to 2,148 since the first case was recorded in December from 333 announced by the health minister in early March. The number of reported cases has climbed more than eightfold to 47,902 over the same period.
According to reports from UNICEF, more than 2,500 people have died from the disease in Central and West Africa. This is reportedly the worst outbreak of the disease in the region in five years.
For the sake of comparison, the death toll from meningitis in Nigeria just since December is almost 50 times the number of people killed worldwide by the H1N1 swine flu virus. But experts worry, given the speed with which swine flue has spread, that it could be devastating if swine flu reaches Africa.
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