Meningitis, a disease rarely heard of nowadays in China, claimed the lives of 164,000 people in 1967 when more than 3 million people were affected. From 1950 to 1979, 8.77 million people, many children below the age of 5, were diagnosed with meningitis. Some 570,000 died of the disease. In the 1980s, meningitis vaccines were widely used across the country and the disease faded away. Disease control experts caution that meningitis is under effective control, but in recent years a growing number of patients have been diagnosed, and there is a long way to go before the disease is fully eradicated.
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