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

Health Check

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