Two children are stable in the National Children’s Hospital (HNN): both of them have meningitis, a non-common but very dangerous disease.
It is an inflammation in the membranes that cover the brain, either by bacteria or virus.
According to María Luisa Ávila, HNN infectologist, one of the way to transmit the disease is related to a bad practice that many Costa Ricans maintain nowadays: kissing babies, specially on their hands and mouths.
Eliminating such a practice will not only protect your child from suffering from meningitis but also from other diseases, such as respiratory infections.
There are several types of meningitis. The most common is viral meningitis, which lasts just a few hours and people think of it as “the good meningitis”. However, Ávila declared that its consequencess can be very severe.
There are some types of meningitis that not only affect the membranes of the brain but also attack brain tissue and leave the child, or the adult, with motor or cognitive problems and it can even cause death,
declared the specialist .
Meningitis is always suspected in a child when there are the following symptoms:
-There is vomit that it’s expelled like a projectile.
-There is very high fever.
-The child has severe headaches.
-The child suffers from alterations of the state of consciousness.
-The child is very drowsy.
-The head, when moving, feels very rigid.
As a preventive measure, the doctor recommends not to smoke around children, to breastfeed young children, they should have the complete vaccination and they should not visit sick children.