Family Care
Meningitis in Babies -Can Claim Life within 24 hours

Meningitis is caused by the outer membrane of human brain infection and inflammation, the infection may be a common bacteria, mycobacterium tuberculosis or viral from the air into the body by the blood to the brain. Meningitis can  also affected by otitis media, sinusitis, pneumonia and other diseases caused by bacteria introduced into the brain. The symptoms for the diseases will have high fever and seizures, the child will likely to be sleepy, look blunt, and sometimes vomiting and headache, or feeling the stiff neck.

 

In the survey of Hong Kong Paediatric Foundation, shows that parents have a low awareness of meningitis, only 25% parents of children under 5 years of age knows the streptococcus pneumoniae is a common carrier, within only 10% of parents know the bacteria can cause meningitis. The lethality of meningitis, only 22% of parents are aware that within 24 hours of the disease can kill young children's lives, it is cautions that parents need to be vigilant for their child. Early symptoms of meningitis such as fever, headache or vomiting, and general flu like, easily ignored by their parents, if there are any doubt for their kids, it is advice to seek a doctor immediately to avoid delay in treatment; while parents may consider vaccination for their children, prevention of infection disease invasion.

 

Clinical Symptoms:

 

Symptoms for newborn : infants will usually have high fever, crying, anxiety, anorexia, body temperature instability, while also vomiting, diarrhea or cramps and so on; neck stiffness and other phenomena are not obvious.

 

Symptoms for grown child: may include high fever, headache, crying, anxiety, sleepiness, vomiting and stiff neck, sometimes associated with convulsions of the case, and because of increased intracranial pressure and persistent vomiting. If the parents hear the child during this period often address their headache, persistent vomiting, continuous diarrhea, please paying particular attention. If unfortunately the virus to the brain tissue of the internal violations will lead to more serious encephalitis. At this time other than the addition to the above symptoms of meningitis, other illness will appear like consciousness and intoxication.

 

Medical Treatment:

Basically, depending the kind of bacteria or viral meningitis, doctors will used the suitable types of antibiotics, tests and thorough kill the virus, for this treatment time will vary, if only ordinary bacteria which will required injection of 2 to 3 weeks of antibiotics, but if the fungal infection and tuberculosis bacteria, treatments may take 6 weeks to 3 months, so most importantly is to have a thorough checkup of the kind of bacteria for a suitable medical treatment. It is important the treatment should done completely and thoroughly removing all bacteria, otherwise this will create more complications.

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