Press release – Launch of AMERT to strengthen genomic epidemiology of meningitis in Africa
A joint initiative by teams from the CSRS and the University of Oxford
Abidjan, 5 October 2026 — To mark World Meningitis Day, the team at the Centre for Research on Meningitis and Related Diseases (Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire, CSRS) and the team at the University of Oxford have jointly announced the launch of AMERT — African Meningitis Epidemiology in Real Time. This platform facilitates the storage, analysis and contextualisation of genomic data on the bacteria responsible for meningitis in Africa.
AMERT is a joint initiative led by Dr Kanny Diallo and Dr Tiemele Simon Amoikon, from the CSRS’s Molecular Epidemiology Research Team (EREM), and Professor Martin Maiden and Dr Keith Jolley, from the University of Oxford. This collaborative effort aims to make sequencing data more useful to laboratories and for the surveillance of bacterial meningitis in Africa.
The platform comprises four databases, which have already been enriched through the curation of publicly available genomic sequences. As at 1 October 2026, they contain 3,237 genomes of Neisseria meningitidis, 95 of Haemophilus influenzae, 312 from Streptococcus agalactiae (group B streptococcus, GBS) and 7,185 from Streptococcus pneumoniae. These data constitute an initial resource for contextualising the sequences from participating laboratories.
Building on the PubMLST infrastructure, AMERT offers participating laboratories a space to upload, store and analyse their sequencing data whilst retaining control over it and keeping it non-public for as long as necessary. AMERT users can view the sequences deposited on the platform, but cannot modify those from other laboratories. Access within AMERT is therefore distinct from the public release of data.
Comparison with public isolates already available in PubMLST allows the analysed sequences to be placed within national, regional, continental and global contexts. Laboratories can thus interpret their results in the light of a broader set of African and international genomic data.
Through this joint initiative, teams from the CSRS and the University of Oxford are inviting national reference laboratories, university hospitals and research centres to join AMERT and upload their data to the platform. Their participation will help to improve the representation of the genomes of bacteria responsible for meningitis in Africa, to better understand their diversity and circulation, and to inform public health decisions.
To mark World Meningitis Day, the two teams are calling on African laboratories to rally behind AMERT to analyse their data and work together to strengthen genomic surveillance of meningitis across the continent.
End of press release