The World Health Organisation (WHO) has released its first-ever global guidelines for meningitis diagnosis, treatment and care, which aim to speed up detection, ensure timely treatment, and improve long-term care for affected persons.
Bacterial meningitis is the most dangerous form and can become fatal within 24 hours. About 20 per cent of people who contract bacterial meningitis develop long-term complications, including disabilities that impact quality of life.
The disease also carries heavy financial and social costs for individuals, families, and communities. According to WHO, despite effective treatments and vaccines against some forms of meningitis, the disease remains a significant global health threat.
By bringing together the latest evidence-based recommendations, the guidelines provide a critical tool for reducing deaths and disability caused by the disease.
With these guidelines, WHO provides countries with a critical tool to close gaps in meningitis diagnosis, treatment and care, ensuring that more people receive timely treatment and long-term support.
Speaking during the launch, WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, said that bacterial meningitis kills one in six of the people it strikes, and leaves many others with lasting health challenges, adding that implementing these new guidelines will help save lives, improve long-term care for those affected by meningitis, and strengthen health systems.
He said, “Meningitis can affect anyone anywhere, and at any age, however, the disease burden remains particularly high in low- and middle-income countries and in settings experiencing large-scale epidemics.
“The highest burden of disease is seen in a region of sub-Saharan Africa, often referred to as the ‘meningitis belt’, which is at high risk of recurrent epidemics of meningococcal meningitis.
The guidelines emphasised that improving clinical management of meningitis is essential to reducing mortality and morbidity, minimising long-term complications and disability, and improving quality of life for affected individuals and communities.
The new guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations for the clinical management of children over one month of age, adolescents, and adults with acute community-acquired meningitis.
It addressed all aspects of clinical care, including diagnosis, antibiotic therapy, adjunctive treatment, supportive care, and management of long-term effects and given the similarities in clinical presentation, diagnosis, and management approaches across different forms of acute community-acquired meningitis, the guidelines address both bacterial and viral causes.
The guidelines provide recommendations for both non-epidemic and epidemic settings, the latter superseding the previous 2014 WHO guidelines, which covered meningitis outbreak response.
As resource-limited settings bear the highest burden of meningitis, these guidelines have been specifically developed to provide technical guidance suitable for implementation in low- and middle-income countries.
The guidelines are intended for use by health-care professionals in first- and second-level facilities, including emergency, inpatient, and outpatient services. Policymakers, health planners, academic institutions, and civil society organisations can also use them to inform capacity-building, education, and research efforts.
In addition, the guidelines contribute to the broader Defeating Meningitis by 2030 Global Roadmap, adopted by WHO Member States in 2020, which aims to: eliminate bacterial meningitis epidemics, reduce cases of vaccine-preventable bacterial meningitis by 50 per cent and deaths by 70per cent, and reduce disability and improve quality of life after meningitis.
