On a sunny afternoon in Bakura village, in northwestern Nigeria’s Zamfara state, dozens of school children were hurrying home, holding hands, chatting, and singing school rhymes. But Halima Ahmed’s children were not among them.

Ahmed’s two children — Aminu, 12, and Nasir, 8, were among the many victims of the cerebrospinal meningitis outbreak in Nigeria in January this year.

“They came back from school that day and started developing fever,” Ahmed, 55, said. She was sitting, her legs outstretched on a mat in her mud house, draped in a bright Ankara fabric. “When we took them to the local clinic, they were diagnosed with meningitis.

“They would have lived if the vaccines were enough,” she said, using her blue headscarf to wipe the teardrops trickling down her cheeks. “I pray for them before I go to bed each day that Allah will accept their innocent souls.”

According to Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), 14,473 cases of meningitis have been identified this year with 1,155 reported deaths.

Zamfara state was one of the worst hit, with more than 3,145 people infected. It was also the first state in Nigeria to witness, in November 2016, the outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis.

Meningitis is an inflammation of the meninges, the protective membrane covering the brain and spinal cord, and it can result in brain damage and even death. It is spread through close contact, and is marked by symptoms like high fever, stiff neck, vomiting, headaches, and altered level of consciousness.

Cerebral meningitis, meanwhile, occurs when “the inflammation just like normal meningitis, involves both the covering of the brain and spinal cord caused by Neisseria meningitis A,” said Anthony Mbah, consultant physician at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital.

Nigeria lies on the so-called “meningitis belt,” which stretches across Sub-Saharan Africa from Senegal to Ethiopia. This year’s outbreak is one of the first times that a strain of type C meningitis has spread (previous outbreaks have been caused by type A).

This year’s outbreak is not the first, nor the worst. The worst outbreak on record was in 1996 with 109,580 cases and 11,717 people killed. There have also been three smaller outbreaks since.

TThis year’s outbreak could have been partially prevented — if vaccine supplies had not been stolen from the communities they were intended to protect.

In April, the World Health Organization’s International Coordinating Group on vaccine provision donated 500,000 doses of meningitis C vaccines to help combat the outbreak. Shortly after, the British government sent a shipment of 820,000 doses.

But less than 100 patients received the vaccines for free; most were forced to buy it from local drugstores in the market.

In Zamfara state, two officials were reported to have stolen meningitis vaccines meant for the patients. Out of 400 meningitis drugs and injections allocated to Bakura village, where the Ahmed family lives, only 30 were administered to the patients.

Patients were instead forced to buy the drugs from local drugstores that purchased the stolen vaccines from the officials. In turn, the pharmacies resold them for N1000 (US $2.78), which for many people in Bakura translated to a day’s wage.

“It is true. Some health officials stole the drugs,” said Sanusi Jinga, who once disguised as a dealer to buy the stolen vaccines from the officials. He had been told that some health officials were re-selling the drugs to the victims’ families so he decided to hide his identity. “When my son was sick, I took him to the primary health care center in my village but there were no drugs. I later got information where the drugs were sold. But I couldn’t afford it. The prices were very costly.”

The next day around 9 am, Jinga lost Abdul, his three-year old son, because he couldn’t afford the medicine to prevent the illness from taking hold (Jinga’s son died of meningitis, but according to our sources, the vaccines are often used to treat meningitis as well as prevent it).

“Some dealers have been arrested and made to account for the drugs,” said Amina Bello, a nurse at the Federal Medical Center in Gusau who has been treating infected patients since the outbreak of the disease in Zamfara. A panel was set up to investigate the missing drugs — but it hasn’t yet come up with any conclusions, and people who stole the drugs are yet to be prosecuted.

TThis is not the first time that Nigerian officials have diverted vaccines and funds meant for patients.

In April, The Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria suspended its partnership with Nigeria following revelations that seven officials of the Ministry of Health, along with three vendors, had diverted $4 million meant for public health for personal use.

As a result, out of 3.4 million Nigerians living with HIV/AIDS, only 750,000 were able to access antiretroviral therapy.

“This is not the first time we are witnessing this ugly situation of diversion of drugs,” said an official from the health ministry who didn’t want his name used because he was not authorized to speak on the matter. “It happened last year and nobody was caught, and now it is happening again. There must be accountability and serious penalty to offenders if we must win this war against the outbreak.”

The federal government had, on many occasions, set up committees and panels of inquiry to investigate vaccines and funds diversion. These efforts, however, have yielded little to no positive results. The case of theft and fraud still continues, in some cases on an even larger scale.

Almost five months since the investigative panel was set up, nothing more has been heard regarding its findings or recommendations — causing concern that the case investigation might be abandoned.

“I guessed it has been swept under the carpet,” said Peter Issa, a doctor who has been following the investigation. “We might continue in this vicious cycle until we get start getting things right in this country.”

Corruption is widespread in Nigeria, even in the health sector which was, before now, considered to be the least corrupt government institution, according to a poll conducted by Transparency International in 2015. Transparency International ranked the country 136 out of 176 in its Corruption Perceptions Index 2016.

“This is one of our many setbacks in this country. Virtually every sector is guilty of one corrupt practice or the other,” said Johnson Ume, an anti-corruption campaigner. “We must fight it headlong else we remain where we are.”

Nigeria’s President — Muhammadu Buhari vowed to root out corruption when he was elected in 2015. However, not much has changed since. It remains widespread throughout the country, especially among his appointed officials.

MMany other children will continue to die, just like Halima Ahmed’s, if authorities do not take immediate action to stop the diversion of vaccines and fraud in the ministry. She is traumatized and believes her two boys would still be alive if the drugs were available.

But there are fledgling reasons for optimism. Back in July, the WHO and Meningitis Research Foundation pledged their commitment to eliminate the disease across the meningitis belt in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030, a hopeful sign of a global attempt to root out the disease.

“I still feel the pain of their death every day,” Ahmed said. “They could have been saved if the drugs were provided to us. I don’t want other children to die.”