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International youth day
7 August 2009
The UK’s longest established meningitis charity, the Meningitis Trust, is supporting International Youth Day on August 12 and is encouraging children who have been affected by meningitis to not suffer in silence.
The charity is urging children who have experienced the disease to access the free support the Trust has to offer by telephoning the children’s helpline 0808 801 03 88 which is available for 7 – 16 year olds.
The Trust estimates that around 61,000 children aged 5 -14 living in the UK could be struggling to cope with the life changing after-effects of meningitis; and every year nearly 1,100 children in the UK could find themselves fighting the impact of the devastating disease.
Louise Poole, now 14 and attends St Cuthbert Mayne School in Torquay, contracted pneumococcal meningitis aged 11, she was in hospital for two weeks and one of those weeks was in intensive care on life support.
Louise’s recovery was slow and she was unable to return to school for four months - even then it was only for a few hours a week.
Louise says: “I think people should be aware of how long it takes to recover fully from meningitis. I thought I would be better sooner. Although physically I look fine, I have been left with an acquired brain injury which causes problems with my concentration and extreme tiredness.”
Louise’s mother, Angela, says “Even if someone doesn’t have any serious after-effects, the experience and its consequences are far reaching. People are often told ‘well at least they survived!’, that’s ok for the first couple of months but it’s surprising how long it goes on for”.
The Trust has recently launched an art therapy service specifically for children. It has been proven that art therapy enables those children who have had a traumatic experience, to communicate with trained therapists, to learn to cope with a sudden, and sometimes devastating, change in their life.
More than 20,000 people are helped by the Meningitis Trust each year through a range of FREE professional support services. These include, a freephone 24-hour nurse-led helpline (0800 028 18 28), counselling, home visits, one-to-one contact and community support.
The Trust also funds more than £170,000 every year in financial support grants and distributes millions of leaflets, posters, symptoms cards, information sheets and other materials which raise awareness of meningitis.
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