NZ has top meningitis death rate in the world

Alex Hickey
New Zealand has the highest death and infection rate from the meningococcal B virus in the developed world.
The infection rate (12.2 percent) is more than double that of countries such as England and Wales and the death rate (5 percent) is five times that of the majority of Western countries.
The shocking statistics were revealed by an Auckland health specialist at the Hawke's Bay Medical Research Foundation's annual meeting in Napier last night.
Auckland University Medical School's professor of child and youth health, Diana Lennon, said the high infection and death rates were the "driving force" behind creating a vaccination programme to combat the epidemic that broke out in 1991.
The programme began in Counties Manukau earlier this year and will be rolled out in Hawke's Bay in March, 2005.
Dr Lennon said when a vaccination programme was introduced safety was the "paramount issue".
"The general feeling is that the vaccine is very safe," she said.
Similar vaccines were used in Cuba and Norway and "no serious adverse reactions" occurred despite 40 million doses being proscribed.
The Kiwi vaccine was based on the Norwegian version that was 87 percent effective in school age children, she said.
Although the vaccine might not work on some younger children (under five) it was effective if the children produced antibodies.
Trials showed that the version had an 80 percent success rate (in all age groups) at encouraging the production of antibodies.
The life span of an epidemic was 18 years and if the current outbreak was left to run its natural course there could be 600 deaths a year for the next four to five years, she said.
Dr Lennon said that overcrowded homes were one of the "biggest independent risk factors" in the spread of the disease.
In Victorian England, tuberculosis (TB) and pneumonia spread because of poor living conditions and the meningococcal virus flourished in similar conditions in New Zealand.
Ethnicity was not a factor and the high numbers of Pacific Islanders and Maori represented was a socio-economic phenomenon, she said.
The cost of the vaccination programme would be $2.5m but if left untreated the hospital and allied health costs could be as much as $750m. Hawke's Bay District Health Board medical officer of health Caroline McElnay said planning for the local immunisation campaign was going well.
GPs would start immunising under fives in March and schools would start the process in April, Dr McElnay said. Hawke's Bay had the highest number of accredited vaccinators per head of population in NZ.