2009–2010 West African meningitis outbreak
2009 meningitis epidemic in Africa
The 2009–2010 West African meningitis outbreak was an epidemic of bacterial meningitis which occurred in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria since January 2009, an annual risk in the African meningitis belt. A total of 13,516 people have been infected with meningitis, and 931 have died. Nigeria has been the most adversely affected, with over half of the total cases and deaths occurring in the nation. The WHO reported on 27 March 2009 that 1,100 had died and there were 25,000 suspected cases. It is the worst outbreak in the region since 1996, and a third of the world's emergency vaccine stockpile for the bacterial form has been consumed. The GAVI Alliance has been trying to secure more vaccines.
Background
West Africa is regularly struck by an annual meningitis epidemic, usually affecting between 25,000 and 200,000 inhabitants. However, this epidemic has been the deadliest outbreak since 1996. That year's meningitis infected over 100,000 people and killed 10,000 during a three-month period.
According to Doctors Without Borders, up to 400 vaccination teams of five people each immunized thousands of people every day in the region for a few weeks.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “2009–2010 West African meningitis outbreak” as 2009 meningitis epidemic in Africa. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2579041. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2010 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “2009–2010 West African meningitis outbreak” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.