Dr Phil Kieran: I'm worried about my children getting meningitis 

I remember being told in fifth year that one of our classmates had meningitis and we would all have to take antibiotics. He wasn’t particularly sick, so my biggest worry was that the medicine would turn my tears and urine red. The whole class found the fact that we all had red pee very amusing and meningitis didn’t seem that scary. 

About two weeks after the course of antibiotics finished, I was in Irish College when I heard a friend was in ICU due to meningitis and likely wouldn’t pull through. He recovered fully, thankfully, but it brought home the seriousness of the condition and made more sense of why my parents were so scared of it at the time.

What this also illustrates is that meningitis was reasonably common at the time. I remember the TV ads showing parents how to check if a rash disappeared when pressed (the glass tumbler test) and how this was a widely discussed issue. The HSE introduced the meningitis C vaccine in 2000 - four years later, it introduced the meningitis B vaccine for kids. Before this, Ireland had the second highest rates of meningitis in Europe but fortunately meningitis is not nearly as common today.

Meningitis is a catch-all term for a process that causes inflammation of the lining around the brain and spinal cord. What we are talking about is called invasive infectious meningitis and more specifically meningococcal meningitis, a bacterial infection that can cause severe, rapid, life-threatening sepsis in some cases. In Ireland, most cases are caused by types B and C.

Since we started vaccinating for meningitis C the total rates of meningitis have dropped from 160 cases in every 100,000 people to 40 in every 100,000 by 2016. Interestingly, the rates of meningitis B dropped with the rates of meningitis C. Since the introduction of the Men B vaccine, rates have fallen even further.

So, what should you look out for with meningitis? Meningitis can present very rapidly with a child developing a fever, rash and rapidly progressing to confusion, unconsciousness and if untreated death. Thankfully, this rarely happens. 

It can present with a mild head cold for two to three days (which almost every child will have at this time of year), progressing to fever, confusion, headache (particularly not wanting to look at any lights or a bright TV screen) and severe irritation. 

If you see a rash, pressing a glass against it is a good way to look for the characteristic rash of meningitis (if it goes pale through the glass it is less worrying). If you are worried that your child may have these symptoms, you should seek a medical review. 

In the first case above you would bring the child directly to hospital but in the milder forms contact your GP or if outside normal hours contact your out-of-hours GP service (SouthDoc in Cork and Kerry) and tell them what is worrying you.

If you have a question for Dr Phil Kieran, please send it to parenting@examiner.ie