Article Source: The Daily Camera

Project part of center's Community Building Program

This time of year, the rains finally begin to fall after a long, dry winter in the Sahel region of Africa. The monsoon weather pattern is depended on each summer to quench the cracked earth and nourish the crops.It's also depended on -- for reasons scientists don't totally understand -- to end the area's perpetual outbreaks of bacterial meningitis, a disease that causes an inflammation of the membrane that covers the brain.

Now, scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder are working to improve monsoon forecasts so that countries in Africa's "meningitis belt" -- which roughly stretches across the continent from Senegal to Ethiopia -- can better prepare to fight the disease with a limited supply of vaccine.

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