Give your baby prune juice if it has meningitis, parents were advised

 A “concerning” number of parents of newborns with bacterial meningitis have been told to stay at home instead of taking their child to hospital.

Worried parents say they have received “inappropriate” guidance about how to care for their unwell baby – including giving prune juice to treat fever and irritability.

Researchers examined the care of almost 100 newborns across England with an average age of 14 days when diagnosed with bacterial meningitis – which is rarer but more serious than viral meningitis – from 2010 to 2013.

They found that parents of more than a quarter of them were advised to stay at home after raising concerns with a health worker.

The study found that 66 babies were at home when they became unwell while the others were already in hospital. Three in 10 parents took their baby straight to hospital but 70 per cent sought help from another health worker first, including their GP, the old NHS Direct telephone service or by contacting their community midwife.

Of these, 28 per cent were advised to stay at home, the authors found.

Of the 66 newborns who were at home when they became unwell, 30 per cent were thought to have been given “inappropriate pre-hospital management”, said researchers at St George’s University of London.

They wrote: “Twelve infants with fever warranted further investigation and in a further eight cases there was a delay in seeking help despite the presence of worrying clinical features.

“Examples of inappropriate advice included being told that their child’s fever was due to a change in milk formula, or to an umbilical hernia, or where prune juice was recommended for fever and irritability.”

Prof Paul Heath, senior author, said in the journal BMJ Open: “It is clear better recognition and management is essential if lives are to be saved and complications minimised.”