On Monday morning, a child was admitted to our hospital with a high-grade fever that the mother claimed had started the previous night. Over the last 17 hours, the poor child was not taking any feeds and seemed to hate being touched, which was breaking his mother's heart, confused as she was about why the pediatricians were looking so grim for 'just a fever.' When I came to the ward on Tuesday morning, the child's bed was empty. The nurses informed us that the child passed away the previous night. From the start of the first symptom to the demise of the child, the timeline had barely crossed 24 hours.
That was my first experience as a doctor seeing a patient suffering from meningococcal meningitis. And I have not forgotten it even 15 years later. Of the 1 million people and more who are affected by meningitis every year across the world, the bacterial version is the most common and…
