Acting against or designed to kill meningococcus bacteria, which causes meningitis.
From anti- + meningococcic, where meningococcus combines 'meningitis' (inflammation of the brain/spinal cord membrane, from Greek 'meninx') with 'coccus' (spherical bacterium). The term emerged with modern microbiology in the late 1800s.
Meningococcal disease was once a devastating childhood killer, but the discovery of antimeningococcic vaccines and antibiotics transformed it from a death sentence to a preventable disease—one of medicine's great victories that most people don't realize saved millions of lives.
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