The bacteria are not spread by casual contact or by simply breathing the air where a person with meningitis has been.
Enteroviruses, which cause viral meningitis, are most often spread through direct contact with an infected person’s stool. (via small children not toilet trained and changing diapers of an infected infant).
SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF MENINGITIS:
Often, the symptoms of viral meningitis and bacterial meningitis are the same. So it is important to take immediate action to identify the type of Meningitis your child is affected with.
Symptoms may develop over several hours or may take 1 or 2 days.
1. Children or anyone over 2 years:
High fever, headache, and stiff neck are common symptoms.
Other symptoms may include slow or inactiveness, nausea, vomiting, discomfort looking into bright lights, confusion, and sleepiness.
2. In newborns and small infants:
The classic symptoms of fever, headache, and neck stiffness may be absent or difficult to detect. Irritability, high pitched cry, poor feeding, vomiting, fever, seizures, slowness, bulging fontanelle (soft spot in the skull) are symptoms in new borns. As the disease progresses, patients of any age may have seizures.
About 25 - 30% of people with bacterial meningitis die from it. Sixty percent of infants who survive bacterial meningitis have brain damage, hearing problems, or developmental difficulties. Most people who get viral meningitis recover completely without any problems.
Who’s Most At Risk?:
These conditions and characteristics increase the risk for bacterial meningitis:
• Living in a crowded setting, such as a dormitory or child-care facility (for meningococcal meningitis)
• Age: children, young people and older adults are more likely to develop meningitis.
• Significant head injury, skull trauma, or cerebrospinal rhinorrhea (flow of cerebrospinal fluid from the nose after a head injury) A suppressed immune system
TREATMENT:
There is no specific treatment for viral meningitis. Most patients completely recover on their own within 2 weeks. Bed rest, plenty of fluids, and medicine to relieve fever and headache are the only treatments.
Bacterial meningitis is treated with conventional medical therapies, using antibiotics. Complementary and alternative therapies should be used only as a supportive to conventional treatment, not to replace it, and only with the guidance of a qualified health professional.
Indicated Homeopathic remedies alleviate symptoms of meningitis, in addition to standard medical care. Before prescribing a remedy, homeopaths take into account clinical symptoms along with person’s constitutional type -- your physical, emotional, and psychological makeup. An experienced homeopath assesses all of these factors when determining the most appropriate remedy for each individual.
Once again, the Meningococcal season is upon us, yet few people know that Homeopathy can provide safe, effective and inexpensive protection against all strains of this bacterium. While the disease is not common in Australia, hundreds of infections are reported each season. Necessary precautions to prevent the spread of bacteria and virus has to be taken and adviced by the parents to their children.
At first sign of symptoms, caontact your doctor immediately.
