Many children with meningitis enter the hospital

From 22 to 24/5, at the Pediatrics Department, Bach Mai Hospital (Hanoi), 10 children were brought to the examination with fever, vomiting and headache; Many children are diagnosed with meningitis and encephalitis.

Increased encephalitis in children

On May 22, seeing her daughter's fever, the family brought little Khanh Huyen, 9-year-old, Dinh Cong (Hanoi) to Pediatrics, Bach Mai Hospital for examination. After that, she slept and awoke to wake up with a headache. Therefore, the doctor conducts cerebrospinal fluid aspiration , resulting in a baby with viral meningitis . After 4 days of treatment, the baby reduced vomiting, headache.

Doctor Nguyen Dong Hai, Deputy Department of Pediatrics (Bach Mai Hospital) recommends, from the beginning of the season so far the department receives about 20 cases of children diagnosed with meningitis, viral encephalitis. Last weekend, the number of patients who came for examination due to headache, vomiting did not increase sharply.

"Symptoms such as headache, nausea, and high fever are easily confused with respiratory infections, other viral fever. Therefore, it is important to monitor children. If in doubt, the doctor will point prescribe cerebrospinal fluid to determine if the child has encephalitis or meningitis , Dr. Hai said.

If the child has high fever, vomiting, and headache, many parents need to think of encephalitis and meningitis.(Artwork: N.P0.

Encephalitis, meningitis is quite a dangerous disease for children , can even lead to death. If not detected early, timely treatment, children may suffer from mental sequelae, affecting intellectual development, poor awareness. The disease is in season so parents need to raise their guard when they see that they have fever, vomiting and headache.

According to Dr. Nguyen Tien Dung, former head of the Pediatrics Department (Bach Mai Hospital), the disease often happens suddenly, with healthy children suddenly having high fever, convulsions, lethargy, coma in 1-3 days . Severe disease progresses very quickly. Common disease in children over one year old, most commonly in children 3-15 years old.

The causative agent may be due to Japanese encephalitis virus , but is now rare because the child has been vaccinated quite well. The second group of causes is quite common due to intestinal viruses , abnormal changes, mild cases, after a week of recovery without leaving any sequelae. In contrast, there are young children with severe changes, death very quickly. This virus group does not yet have a vaccine. In addition, children with encephalitis, meningitis may be complications of common infectious diseases such as chickenpox, mumps .

Clinical manifestations in children are varied and vary by age . The disease usually starts with simple symptoms such as fever (very high fever, persistent), unexplained vomiting (not food, anorexia, no accompanying diarrhea), headache when the fever is gone but still headache. However, there are also cases where children may vomit more or less, even with diarrhea. In particular, when children call for a lot of headaches, parents need to think immediately about encephalitis, meningitis and take their children for urgent examination.

To prevent disease, parents need to take their children to get a full Japanese encephalitis vaccine . For intestinal virus groups, attention should be paid to food hygiene and safety issues, clean processing, ripe eating and hand washing before eating.