"But more importantly, I can tell you what's not wrong: it's not meningitis or cancer or a brain tumor or some other life-threatening illness."
In the African meningitis belt, improved epidemiological surveillance and prompt case management with oily chloramphenicol - the standard antibiotic treatment - are used to control epidemics.
In Colombia, cases of acute bacterial meningitis fell by 40% in a year.
Infectious diseases such as meningitis, measles, mumps and chronic ear infections can lead to hearing impairment, mostly in childhood, but also later in life.
Similarly, meningitis outbreaks in Africa are strongly correlated with drought.
A headache with a high temperature, neck stiffness and/or a new rash may be due to meningitis.
Severe cases of bacterial meningitis can result in brain damage or death if not treated quickly.
Group a meningococcus accounts for an estimated 80-85% of all cases in the meningitis belt, with epidemics occurring at intervals of 7-14 years.
In many Asian countries, however, the epidemiology and public health burden of neurological diseases such as Japanese encephalitis and bacterial meningitis are poorly understood.
Overall access to care ratios, which represent the probability that a child in need of hospitalization will have access to care at the hospital, were 51-58% for pneumonia and 66-70% for meningitis.
Bacterial meningitis may result in brain damage, hearing loss or a learning disability in 10% to 20% of survivors.
These could be signs of meningitis, a potentially life-threatening infection.
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