African Meningitis Belt

The African meningitis belt is a band of sub-Saharan Africa, stretching from Senegal to Ethiopia across roughly 18 countries and about 300 million people, that experiences unusually high rates of epidemic meningococcal meningitis. The primary cause is the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis, and outbreaks are concentrated in the dry season from December to June, easing as humidity rises. The concept was proposed in 1963 by World Health Organization researcher Leon Lapeyssonnie, who noticed that the areas affected corresponded closely to a band receiving between 300 and 1,100 millimeters of mean annual rainfall. The name describes this pattern of disease incidence across the continent rather than a single formally bounded geographic strip. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/