Environmental Risk and Meningitis Epidemics in Africa

摘要

Epidemics of meningococcal meningitis occur in areaswith particular environmental characteristics. We presentevidence that the relationship between the environmentand the location of these epidemics is quantifiable and pro-pose a model based on environmental variables to identifyregions at risk for meningitis epidemics. These findings,which have substantial implications for directing surveil-lance activities and health policy, provide a basis for moni-toring the impact of climate variability and environmentalchange on epidemic occurrence in Africa