SAN FERNANDO, Camarines Sur, Philippines—The Department of Health in Bicol confirmed on Wednesday the case of meningococcemia that claimed the life of an 11-month-old baby boy in this town but told the public not to panic as the disease has not spread.
DOH-Bicol Director Gloria Balboa said the baby boy had been buried and the people who came in contact with the boy and his family were all given medication and, so far, no symptoms surfaced after the incubation period of four days.
The baby boy, who suffered from fever and rashes, was brought to the Naga Imaging Center Cooperative (NICC) Doctors Hospital in Naga City in the early hours of March 19 and was diagnosed with meningococcemia. He died two hours after admission.
The baby was embalmed and was buried in a sealed coffin in the afternoon of the same day, said Balboa.
San Fernando Mayor Eugenio Lagasca Jr. said he, too, took the medicine given by the DOH on March 21 because he was with the members of the baby’s family when they were preparing for his burial at the town’s cemetery on March 19.
Lagasca said he was among the 20 persons who visited the boy’s short wake.
He said the baby boy’s parents told him their neighbors had been avoiding them after it was confirmed that their son, the youngest among four children, died of meningococcemia.
But Balboa said the public must not panic because there has been no indication the disease would spread.
She described meningococcemia as a type of bacterial infection that would spread upon contact with the bacteria-laden saliva of an infected person. It has flu-like symptoms such as fever and coughing.
Meningococcemia is a bacterial infection of the blood caused by Neisseria meningitides bacteria, the same type that causes meningitis, according to the website Healthline.com.
When the bacteria infects the membranes (meninges) covering the brain and spinal cord, the infection is called meningitis but when the infection remains in the blood but does not infect the brain or spinal cord, it becomes meningococcemia.
According to Healthline, the Neisseria meningitides bacteria are common in a person’s upper respiratory tract and do not necessarily cause illness.
The disease spreads from person to person when someone infected with the bacteria sneezes or coughs.
Although anyone could get meningococcemia, it has been most common in babies, children, and young adults, it said. SM