Thankfully, Nigeria’s Center for Disease Control (NCDC) is not basing its response on the governor’s religious-doomsday claims. In the wake of the outbreak, the NCDC says half a million doses of the meningitis C vaccine have been deployed in the most affected states, with an additional 800,000 doses expected to come from Britain, although there is no stated timeframe for their arrival. Still, that might not be enough as Zamfara alone is said to require around 3 million doses to quell the outbreak.

While the strain is different this time, meningitis outbreaks have been frequent in Nigeria. In 1996, in one of the worst-ever outbreaks of the disease, a total of 8,423 cases were reported with 1,181 deaths recorded.

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