Q: I lost my 4 months old baby because of meningitis. She was a very healthy baby and never had any problem from the beginning. One day she started getting high temperature, so we started showing to the paediatrician. He gave pedia to put every six hours. It got controlled, but after a week again it started and again I went to doctor and he asked me to continue with pedia. After seeing 2 days again, I took her to doctor and he asked me to admit her to the hospital. She had very high fever but she was feeding fine and doctors were giving antibiotics but they couldn't make out till she became unconscious and started getting convulsions. Then they did lumbar puncture and got to know that it was meningitis but according to them they couldn't make out which bacteria. She was unconscious for 15 days and was on the ventilator; then doctor said her brain is not at all responding and we have to remove ventilator and we have to let her go. I cant explain the misery we went through all this but had hopes. We had never heard of meningitis. Doctor I want to know how does this happen? She had been give all necessary vaccinations.

A:Meningitis is an infection of membranous covering of the brain called meninges. It comes like any other infections and the immunisations do not prevent all forms of meningitis. This usually is a fulminant disease, more so when it comes during infancy and is associated with involvement of brain, increased by loss of consciousness and recurrent convulsions. Meningitis with significant involvement of brain has poor prognosis and bad outcome as newer antibiotics also may not be able to reverse the process.