The novel partnership aims to map areas south of the Sahara most vulnerable to droughts and storms, to guide a 10-year U.N.-backed meningitis vaccination drive due to start in 2008 to protect 350 million people from Ethiopia to Senegal.

“Health experts need to know where to go first, where the hotspots of the disease will be,” Jose Achache, head of the Swiss-based Group on Earth Observations (GEO), told Reuters on Tuesday. GEO comprises 70 governments as well as other groups.

“The first thing we can do is to have an estimate of the amount of increased desertification to expect,” he told Reuters. “The next mechanism will be the wind: where and when sandstorms will make outbreaks more likely.”

African epidemics of meningitis, an infection of the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, are often linked to sandstorms, apparently because dust inflames noses and throats and allows the bacteria to invade the body.

People cram indoors during such storms, helping a disease spread by coughs and sneezes. Meningitis killed 25,000 people in major African epidemics in 1996-97 and affected 250,000. Many survivors suffer brain damage or amputations.

The World Health Organization says a new meningitis vaccine, expected for use from 2008, could help eliminate the disease in Africa where it is most widespread.

The vaccine, developed by the Serum Institute of India, costs just US$0.40 a dose — a fraction of what past rivals cost. But enough cannot be produced to vaccinate everyone immediately.

“You can make 40 to 60 million doses of the vaccine a year but you have to deploy it to 350 million people,” said David Rogers, president of the Health and Climate Foundation, which is involved in the meningitis project.

“If we can identify the people most at risk we could start where we can have the biggest impact,” he said. “Meningitis is a neglected disease, but it instils fear. The orphanages of Burkina Faso have many deaf and brain-damaged children (as a result of meningitis).”

The U.N. climate panel, which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. President Al Gore, has projected more desertification linked to global warming this century.

It has said that between 75 and 250 million extra Africans are set to suffer from stress on water supplies.

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