Every year in Britain over 2500 people are struck down by a potentially lethal bacterial infection affecting predominantly children under five years old and teenagers. Equinox: Meningitis looks at how this deadly bacterium is defying attempts to develop a vaccine.

It strikes quickly and unexpectedly and symptoms can be so vague and unspecific in the early stages that no alarm bells are sounded until it’s too late. From feeling slightly unwell, a victim can have multi-system failure in hours. It has become the biggest killer of previously healthy children through infection in the U.K. and doctors know of no other life threatening infection that can spread so rapidly.

The programme looks at the problems surrounding the infection and the ways in which doctors throughout the world are attempting to combat what has become, in some countries, a disease of epidemic proportions. The rapid response team from St Mary’s hospital, London is constantly in a race against time to provide treatment as soon as the infection is discovered, such is the rapidity with which the bacterium spread. We also travel to Texas and New Zealand to examine the possible causes of the disease and to ask what can be done to find a vaccine.