Meningtis

Courtney Nickle
September 25, 2009
11:28 a.m

Meningitis is a serious disease that surrounds the brain and spinal cord. Meningitis is so serious because it is known to start epidemics fast, seeing how you can get this disease by someone coughing, sneezing, sharing drinks, or even living close to you. Men, Women, and children are having to protect themselves in South Africa, Nigeria, Thailand, Russia, United Kingdom, and New Zealand. You start with having just a stiff neck maybe a headache, then it turns into a fever, slight confusion, and vomiting. Some of theses countries do not have the medicine to treat this 5% - 10% of patients die, another 10% - 20% survive but come out with having brain damage, hearing loss, or a learning disabilities. Can you imagine catching something and then get better, but walk away without being able to hear again or to go about your normal day without someone’s help. Some of theses places can’t afford to have a child that can’t help themselves or to have a parent not be able to work which results in no food, water, clothes, etc… How will they survive. A lot of treatments can be used to stop this disease such as penicillin, ampicillin, chloramphenicol, and ceftriaxone, but the real question is can these people get this medicine, does there hospital have it even if they can make it there?
It is a horrible sickness to come across and I hope that they can prevent it from becoming a epidemic. I couldn’t imagine getting sick but not be able to hear or think the same even with having the treatment we have in the U.S, but not having the same treatment and having that disability is even more tragic.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs141/en/
http://www.healthmap.org/en