Meningococcal surveillance in Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Abstract

Meningococcal disease is an uncommon infection associated with high case fatality rates, especially in some low resource countries. The burden of meningococcal disease in the Asia Pacific region is relatively low although likely to be underreported. Carriage rates of the causative bacteria, Neisseria meningitidis are also lower than in many other countries, with those of Asian ethnicity having a lower carriage prevalence than other ethnicities. There is a large degree of variability in establishment of infectious disease surveillance and case definitions used across Southeast Asia and Pacific nations. Although disease surveillance is a critically important component of disease control, not all countries mandate reporting of meningococcal disease and many do not have molecular typing capability. Adequate surveillance must include serogroup distribution and disease burden estimation. Improving surveillance capability and transfer to a more active surveillance model with capacity for PCR and genome sequencing will be important for early detection of outbreaks in the future.