TY - JOUR
T1 - The global burden of meningitis in children
T2 - Challenges with interpreting global health estimates
AU - Wright, Claire
AU - Blake, Natacha
AU - Glennie, Linda
AU - Smith, Vinny
AU - Bender, Rose
AU - Kyu, Hmwe
AU - Wunrow, Han Yong
AU - Liu, Li
AU - Yeung, Diana
AU - Knoll, Maria Deloria
AU - Wahl, Brian
AU - Stuart, James M.
AU - Trotter, Caroline
N1 - Funding Information:
This research received no specific funding, but Meningitis Research Foundation has received unrestricted educational grants from GSK, Pfizer and Sanofi which allowed this study to take place.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2021/2
Y1 - 2021/2
N2 - The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a global roadmap to defeat meningitis by 2030. To advocate for and track progress of the roadmap, the burden of meningitis as a syndrome and by pathogen must be accurately defined. Three major global health models estimating meningitis mortality as a syndrome and/or by causative pathogen were identified and compared for the baseline year 2015. Two models, (1) the WHO and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Maternal and Child Epidemiology Estimation (MCEE) group’s Child Mortality Estimation (WHO-MCEE) and (2) the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD 2017), identified meningitis, encephalitis and neonatal sepsis, collectively, to be the second and third largest infectious killers of children under five years, respectively. Global meningitis/encephalitis and neonatal sepsis mortality estimates differed more substantially between models than mortality estimates for selected infectious causes of death and all causes of death combined. Estimates at national level and by pathogen also differed markedly between models. Aligning modelled estimates with additional data sources, such as national or sentinel surveillance, could more accurately define the global burden of meningitis and help track progress against the WHO roadmap.
AB - The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a global roadmap to defeat meningitis by 2030. To advocate for and track progress of the roadmap, the burden of meningitis as a syndrome and by pathogen must be accurately defined. Three major global health models estimating meningitis mortality as a syndrome and/or by causative pathogen were identified and compared for the baseline year 2015. Two models, (1) the WHO and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Maternal and Child Epidemiology Estimation (MCEE) group’s Child Mortality Estimation (WHO-MCEE) and (2) the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD 2017), identified meningitis, encephalitis and neonatal sepsis, collectively, to be the second and third largest infectious killers of children under five years, respectively. Global meningitis/encephalitis and neonatal sepsis mortality estimates differed more substantially between models than mortality estimates for selected infectious causes of death and all causes of death combined. Estimates at national level and by pathogen also differed markedly between models. Aligning modelled estimates with additional data sources, such as national or sentinel surveillance, could more accurately define the global burden of meningitis and help track progress against the WHO roadmap.
KW - Child mortality
KW - Global health
KW - Global health estimates
KW - Haemophilus influenzae
KW - Meningitis
KW - Modelling
KW - Neisseria meningitidis
KW - Neonatal sepsis
KW - Streptococcus pneumoniae
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U2 - 10.3390/microorganisms9020377
DO - 10.3390/microorganisms9020377
M3 - Article
C2 - 33668442
AN - SCOPUS:85100958768
SN - 2076-2607
VL - 9
SP - 1
EP - 16
JO - Microorganisms
JF - Microorganisms
IS - 2
M1 - 377
ER -