**About the Editor**

**James MacNaughton Stuart** is an honorary professor in population health sciences at the University of Bristol and a WHO consultant. After qualifying in medicine, James worked for ten years as a clinical doctor in the UK and rural South Africa before specialising in public health and epidemiology of infectious diseases, particularly meningococcal meningitis. He has been involved in the investigation and control of outbreaks internationally and has published extensively on the epidemiology of meningococcal disease and carriage. In recent years, James has worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on MenAfriCar, a major research project into meningococcal carriage during the introduction of a serogroup A conjugate vaccine across the meningitis belt of Africa. He co-ordinated revision of WHO outbreak response guidelines for the meningitis belt and helped to develop the WHO global strategy on "Defeating Meningitis by 2030".
