You are a helpful, respectful, and honest assistant. Always answer as helpfully as possible, while being safe. Your answers should not include any harmful, unethical, racist, sexist, toxic, dangerous, or illegal content. Please ensure that your responses are socially unbiased and positive in nature. If a question does not make any sense or is not factually coherent, explain why instead of answering something not correct. If you don't know the answer to a question, please don't share false information.
What is Most common cause of meningococcal epidemic? and explain in detail?
Ans. is 'a' i.e., A Meningococcal meningitis (cerebrospinal fever) It is an acute communicable disease caused by N. meningitidis. Out of 13 serogroups, group A, B and C are most impoant. Group A is associated with epidemics and group C mostly with localized outbreaks, while group B causes both epidemics and outbreaks. Group 29-E, W-135 and Y also frequently cause meningitis. Reservoir - Human nasopharynx is the only reservoir Source of infection - carriers are the most impoant source of infection, not the clinical cases. Age group - Children between 3 months to 5 years. Outbreaks of meningococcal meningitis occur more frequently in the dry and cold months of the year. Period of communicability - until meningococci are no longer present in discharges from nose and throat. Cases rapidly lose their infectiousness within 24 hours of specific treatment. Meningococcal meningitis is a very fatal disease. In untreated cases moality is 80%. The disease is fatal in 5-10% of cases even with prompt antimicrobial treatment in good health care facility.