Meningococcal disease in Australia

Although the overall incidence if invasive meningococcal disease in Australia is not high by international standards, Neisseria meningitidis is a major cause of bacterial meningitis and septicaemia in a number of patient subgroups. Clusters of cases are not infrequently recorded. This situation presents significant challenges to public health responses in both the immediate and longer term. Resolution of these problems would be advanced by more accurate and complete data on disease patterns, invasive meningococcal subtypes and antibiotic susceptibility patterns. The prospect of more efficacious conjugate vaccines gives further impetus to the need for improvement of these data.