By Sola Ogundipe & Chioma Obinna

LAGOS — Local and international health officials are worried that Nigerian children may be the worst hit in the lingering shortage of meningitis vaccine in Nigeria and some parts of African countries following possible outbreak of child meningitis in some African countries.

Their worries may not be unconnected with the fact that the only certified vaccine laboratory in the West African sub region is currently defunct.

Already, reports from the World Health Organisation, WHO, revealed that this year, 800 people have died out of the 12,000 infected in Nigeria and Niger Republic in the first large-scale outbreak of the C strain of the meningitis virus.

The WHO had earlier warned that meningitis cases have been increasing since 2013, and that an outbreak of the disease in parts of Africa was imminent.

Vanguard gathered that currently, health officials are making efforts to bridging the wide gap created by the vaccine shortage, amid demands for the reopening of the defunct Federal Government vaccine laboratory located in Yaba, Lagos.

Investigations revealed that even though local health officials are seeking to stockpile five million doses of the vaccine, the manufacturers cannot meet the demand.

However, efforts to reach government officials, weekend, for an update proved abortive as their phones were switched off.

When Vanguard finally reached the Director of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, Prof. Abdulsalami Nasidi, on phone, he said he was attending a meeting in Dakar but confirmed that the shortage was global not peculiar to Nigeria.

Nasidi, who had once headed the defunct laboratory as far back as 1980s had earlier expressed fears over the potential number of fatalities that could result in the event of a meningitis epidemic in the midst of a vaccine shortage.