Jim Cunningham – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2016-02-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate his Department has made of the (a) number of meningitis cases and (b) number of fatal meningitis cases in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement.

Jane Ellison

Public Health England collects data on laboratory confirmed cases of invasive meningococcal disease which is a major cause of bacterial meningitis in England. Linked data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have been used to generate information on deaths from invasive meningococcal disease, as shown in the table. The data do not distinguish between invasive meningococcal disease presentation as meningitis or septicaemia.

Number of laboratory confirmed cases of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) and related ONS certified deaths in England by epidemiological year: 2010/11 to 2014/15

*provisional

The increase in cases of IMD in 2014/15 relative to 2013/14 has been largely due to the rise in one form of IMD – MenW. A new MenACWY vaccination programme was introduced in August 2015 in response to this rise in cases.