Home  >  Health Check  >  Nigeria rolls out world’s first 5-in-1 meningitis vaccine
Health Check
Nigeria rolls out world’s first 5-in-1 meningitis vaccine
Health Check
Apr 17, 2024

After a 50% jump in meningitis cases reported across Africa last year, Nigeria is becoming the first country to roll out a new 5-in-1 meningitis vaccine. The Men5CV vaccine protects people against five strains of the meningococcus bacteria.

Claudia Hammond is joined by New Scientist medical journalist Clare Wilson to discuss how it’s hoped the treatment will help significantly reduce cases of the disease.

We also head to Brazil to hear how the country is dealing with long Covid, four years after the pandemic.

Clare also tells Claudia about the new cancer treatment testing different drugs on thousands of miniature tumours to see which of them works best. The team behind the research at Florida International University in Miami say they hope it could eventually be used routinely for everyone with cancer.

We also get a new update from British journalist Mike Powell, as we follow his journey after receiving a kidney transplant.

And Claudia and Clare look at how patches of skin grafted onto people receiving lung transplants are being used as a way of spotting organ rejection in a new trial.

Image Credit: Martin Harvey

Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Dan Welsh

More Episodes



Apr 22, 2026
Making surgery safer for infants

We learn about a new injectable microgel to help reduce bleeding in infants who require surgical care. In a mice model, it reduced bleeding by at least 50%. Ashley Brown, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at North Carolina State University and UNC Chapel Hill tells presenter Claudia Hammond more about this new material her team has designed.

Joined by Professor of Global Health and Epidemiology at Boston University in the US, Dr Matthew Fox, Claudia hears about a mystery illness that is being investigated by health officials in Burundi, which has caused five deaths and sickened thirty-five people. So far lab analysis of the illness - which causes fever, vomiting, and diarrhoea - has been negative for Ebola and Marburg viruses, Rift Valley fever, and others.

We hear about influential analysis from Cochrane which has concluded that "breakthrough" Alzheimer's drugs are unlikely to benefit patients. Researchers said the impact was "well below" what was needed to make a difference to dementia patients' lives. However, their report has also provoked a vicious backlash from equally esteemed scientists who label it as fundamentally flawed.

We’re joined by health journalist Katie Silver in Mexico, who brings us the news that the President, Claudia Sheinbaum, has announced the details of a plan to introduce universal healthcare – no mean feat in country of 130 million people.

And we hear about an experiment that was done by academics to see if they could trick AI chatbots into believing in an entirely fake disease.

Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Jonathan Blackwell


26min 28sec

Nigeria rolls out world’s first 5-in-1 meningitis vaccine

--:--
--:--