Pharmac announced its plans last month to provide wider access for the meningococcal B vaccine for infants and young adults. The proposal would allow for it to be included in the childhood immunisation schedule and according to the agency and would give thousands of young people and infants protection against the disease. Photo: 123rf
Eliminating meningococcal disease permanently from New Zealand is achievable, according to a group of leading infectious disease experts.
University of Otago epidemiologist Amanda Kvalsvig and her colleagues have published a briefing this morning which describes how a nationwide programme could target the bacterial disease, which is vaccine-preventable but has a high mortality rate if untreated.
According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, meningococcal disease is caused by the bacteria, Neisseria meningitidis.
"These illnesses are often severe, can be deadly, and include infections of the lining of the brain and spinal cord (meningitis) and bloodstream.
"Keeping up to date with recommended vaccines is the best protection against meningococcal disease."
Kvalsvig told Morning Report the briefing asked the question 'are we ready to eliminate this disease' and said: "The answer is yes, we think we really are."
"We have vaccines for all of the five groups that cause the most infections" - Amanda Kvalsvig
Two main changes had occurred in recent years which saw the experts reach this conclusion - vaccines and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Kvalsvig said Covid-19 had given tools, expertise and experience that could be applied to other infectious diseases - such as meningococcal.
Preventing meningococcal from coming into the country was hard to do - but understanding how it arrived and where it spreads would help.
"That's where genome epidemiology is very useful and that's once important lesson we have learnt in the pandemic.
"But behind that, we have a lot of other tools in the toolbox that we can use to stop the spread once it comes in, and that's really what eliminations about. You can't usually stop an infection from coming in, what you can do is stop it from spreading."
Contact tracing - another tool used during the pandemic - was also key.
"Now, contact tracing has been used for years for this disease but now we have much more expertise in contact tracing, so that's the kind of thing we can maybe tighten up what we do, do more of it."
In terms of vaccinations, meningococcal vaccines have been successful in the past during epidemics - but the vaccine only targeted a specific strain of the disease.
There are five strains of the disease that cause serious harm, Kvalsvig said.
"Until recently, we had vaccines for four of the five, but the fifth one was the meningococcal B group, we didn't have a vaccine and now we do and that's the big game changer that we have now.
"We have vaccines for all of the five groups that cause the most infections."
Access was an issue and Kvalsvig said the meningococcal B vaccine needed to be publicly funded.
It is currently only funded for children between 8 weeks and 12 months - with a catch-up programme until 31 August 2025. For others, it costs about $150 per dose.
"This is a disease that affects anyone at all, but the highest risk is in the lowest income families and those are the families that really can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars on vaccines so we need to make sure this is very equitable in its roll-out or else it's not going to work," Kvalsvig said.
It needed a mix of universal coverage as well as a more targeted approach to really protect those most at risk, she said.
Recent cases in New Zealand has occurred in students living in close quarters.
Another lesson learnt by the Covid-19 pandemic was that meningococcal disease spreads similarly, she said.
"It spreads most readily in closed, crowded conditions where air quality is poor and we know so much more now about how to stop the spread in those conditions.
"We've had a bit of a break because our Covid protections were protecting us, not just from Covid, but from a whole lot of other infections, and now that our Covid protections are coming away, our meningococcal disease protections are coming away too."