Health leader welcomes reduced toll from meningitis

WHANGAREI - Health officials are cautiously optimistic a long-running meningitis epidemic may finally be easing its deadly grip on Northland.

Northland Health's Dr Jonathan Jarman said 16 cases of meningococcal disease had been reported in Northland this year, almost half the number at the same time last year.

Northland appeared to be bucking the national trend, which had seen cases remain largely static with 244 cases and seven deaths this year.

"But we definitely can't relax. The fact we have had 16 cases is still 16 too many. There's the potential in every case for that person to die. Early intervention saves lives," he said.

Dr Jarman said it would be fair to say that officials, who had watched, "shell-shocked," as the epidemic swept through the country, were cautiously optimistic the new figures were heralding a change.

Such epidemics typically lasted five to 15 years, with the latest one beginning in 1991.

A glimmer of hope that it might have been easing in 1998, when there were 31 cases, disappeared with the 39 cases recorded last year.

Computer modelling had predicted eight cases last month when there had been only four - a 2-week-old, 2-year-old and 9-year-old from Whangarei and a 9-year-old from the Kaipara area.

"This year I'm hoping that it's going to be very much on the downward slope. We are certainly much better than we were last year."

Dr Jarman said that before 1991 Northland had encountered only one or two cases of the disease a year but since then there had been 178 cases in the region, including 10 fatalities.

The one death this year had been of a 4-year-old Whangarei boy who succumbed to the aggressive meningococcal septicaemia (or blood poisoning) in April. Last year, there were three deaths, all in the Whangarei area.

Northland's overall rate of the disease last year, 28.4 cases per 100,000, was the second highest in New Zealand. Only South Auckland's 32.2 was worse.

There are two forms of meningococcal disease, loosely referred to as meningitis.

Meningococcal meningitis is an infection of the lining of the brain while meningococcal septicaemia is more aggressive, killing up to 15 per cent of sufferers.

Dr Jarman said that unlike the types of meningococcal disease found overseas, there was no vaccine for the type troubling New Zealand because its makeup made it difficult to create an effective vaccine.

Both forms of the disease were caught the same way. Most at risk were people living with those who had it or who inadvertently shared saliva with them - for instance, by drinking from the same cup. The disease could also be spread by ingesting or inhaling droplets from the sneeze or cough of an infected person.

- NZPA