Identification

Title

Using weather forecasts to help manage meningitis in the West African Sahel

Abstract

Understanding and acting on the link between weather and meningitis in the Sahel could help improve vaccine distribution and save lives. People living there know that meningitis epidemics occur in the dry season and end after the start of the rainy season. Integrating and analyzing newly available epidemiological and meteorological data quantified this relationship, showing that that the risk of meningitis epidemics climbed from a background level of 2% to a maximum risk of 25% during the dry season. These data also suggested that, of all meteorological variables, relative humidity has the strongest correlation to cases of meningitis. Weather acts alongside a complex set of environmental, social, and economic drivers, and a complementary investigation of local and regional knowledge, attitudes, and practices suggested several additional interventions to manage meningitis. These include improved awareness of early meningitis symptoms and vaccinations for farmworkers who migrate seasonally. An economic survey showed that the cost of a single case of meningitis is 3 times the average annual household income, underscoring the need for improved vaccination strategy. Using these insights, meteorologists and public health workers developed a tool to guide vaccination decisions. Iterative development allowed a multinational team of public health officials to use the tool while guiding its refinement and directed research toward maximum practical use. That meant focusing on predicting areas where high humidity would naturally end epidemics so vaccines could be moved elsewhere. Using this tool and this approach could have prevented an estimated 24,000 cases of meningitis over a 3-yr period.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7qc04p2

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

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Constraints related to access and use

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Use constraints

Copyright 2015 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact