Thousands of men, women, and children in northern Nigeria have been affected by a meningitis C outbreak, reportedly the largest to hit the country in the past nine years. At the end of April, the Nigerian Ministry of Health reported 9,646 suspected cases of meningitis C, with a total of 839 deaths since late 2016. Almost six months after the first cases were recorded in Zamfara State, Nigeria’s Ministry of Health is still struggling to fight the outbreak. Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has supported the health authorities with treatment, surveillance, case management in the most-affected locations since February, when the outbreak was officially declared.

Eleven MSF surveillance teams visited health facilities to determine the origins of new cases in Sokoto, Zamfara, and Yobe, the states most affected by the outbreak. These visits also allowed MSF to implement in Sokoto and Zamfara additional activities, such as health promotion, to increase community awareness of the signs and symptoms of meningitis and active case finding.

On April 8 MSF began to support the Ministry of Health and on April 15 MSF took over the management of its 200 beds to help reduce the mortality in the worst meningitis C epidemic recorded in the country in nine years. Since then, MSF staff has treated in this facility 614 patients. Most are between five and twenty years old. In this location, MSF’s Nigeria Emergency Response Unit (NERU) works intensively to provide free, high-quality medical care and reduce mortality rates as much as possible. These teams treat challenging cases in an extremely difficult environment. “A few days ago a nine-year-old boy was brought in unconsciousness and with severe meningitis,” recalls Caroline Riefthuis, an MSF nurse in Sokoto. “He received treatment for five days and recovered, but unfortunately we found out that he had become deaf and blind—side effects of severe meningitis.”