The 56th Edition of the Congress of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics is being held in Barcelona, where they have shown the results of an epidemiological study conducted in public and private hospitals in Madrid, the Basque Country, Navarra, Catalonia and Galicia, on the incidence of meningitis Pneumococcus
The study was carried out in two different periods, one in 2001, before the commercialization of the heptavalent conjugate pneumococcal vaccine and the other between 2004 and 2006.
The number of meningitis has decreased as the application of the vaccine in our country has expandedWithout a doubt, it is good news, and it can be considered a considerable decrease since since the beginning of the study, the population has increased by 30%, of the 18.6 cases per 100,000 children under two years with meningitis in 2001 , we went to 7.55 cases in 2006. The decrease in pneumococcal meningitis is recorded in all the age groups that have studied and this data would have to be taken into account by the Ministry of Health that in April did not yet plan to introduce the vaccine Pneumococcal arguing that by protecting only 7 of the 90 serotypes that make up the pneumococcus, diseases of non-vaccine serotypes could increase.
Of the cases of meningitis that currently occur in Spain, more than half affect children under one year and one in four is under six months. One in three children with pneumococcal meningitis becomes deaf, 13% suffer psychomotor paralysis and 7% hydrocephalus. Six out of ten cases of meningitis heal completely.
The bad thing is that if there is a possible remedy that will positively round these data, it is not made available to the population.
