Climate Experts Combating Africa’s Meningitis

OSLO (Reuters) - Climate and health experts are teaming up to combat meningitis in Africa, fearing that creeping desertification and dust storms will aid a disease that thrives where people suffer from sore throats.

The novel partnership aims to map areas south of the Sahara most vulnerable to droughts and storms, to guide a 10-year U.N.-backed meningitis vaccination drive due to start in 2008 to protect 350 million people from Ethiopia to Senegal.

“Health experts need to know where to go first, where the hotspots of the disease will be,” Jose Achache, head of the Swiss-based Group on Earth Observations (GEO), told Reuters on Tuesday. GEO comprises 70 governments as well as other groups.

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