The bacteriology of acute pneumonia and meningitis in children in Papua New Guinea: assumptions, facts and technical strategies

Abstract

Acute respiratory infections in children aged less than 5 years in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea were investigated bacteriologically for 10 years from November 1978. Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae were responsible for 73% of all bacteria cultured from lung aspirate (83 samples), 85.5% from blood (1024 samples) and 92% from cerebrospinal fluid (155 samples). Nonencapsulated H. influenzae was carried by up to 90% of children and was the predominant haemophilus type cultured from lung tissue. Mixed infections of the lung with two types of H. influenzae (8 cases) and both H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae (18 cases), commonly together with other organisms of questionable pathogenicity, reflected the proximity of this organ to the upper respiratory tract. Serotype b accounted for 62% and 82% of H. influenzae isolated from bacteraemic pneumonia and meningitis cases, respectively. Polymicrobic bacteraemic pneumonia occurred in 16 children. Both H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae establish dense, unregulated long-term colonization in the nasopharynx during the neonatal period. Each inhibit autochthonous microflora by mechanisms that are currently unclear. Infections with two or more types occur in 30% (S. pneumoniae) and 60% (H. influenzae) of carriage-positive children. 70-75% of H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae isolates from blood concomitantly colonize the upper respiratory tract. Intense exposure of Papua New Guinean children to penicillin at all levels of health care since the 1940s has resulted in widespread relative resistance among pneumococci to this antibiotic. Resistant strains are now found in 32 serotypes, and in children penicillin resistance is present in 75% of all carriage strains and 52% and 22% of blood and cerebrospinal fluid isolates, respectively. Penicillin-susceptible and resistant pneumococcal serotypes commonly coexist in multiply populated carriage sites. Resistance to betalactam antibiotics is rare among H. influenzae strains and resistance has not been detected in either H. influenzae or S. pneumoniae to chloramphenicol, erythromycin, tetracycline or cotrimoxazole. It should not be assumed that the technology of respiratory bacteriology as it is practised in developed countries can be transferred to the third world for utilization in paediatric aetiology and carriage studies. Respiratory bacteriology strategies as they evolved in Goroka were subject to diverse influences. The type distribution of the major causative agents defied fashionable beliefs, generated the need for more precise epidemiological differentiation and, by virtue of their carriage density, cultural properties and response to commonly used antibiotics, required the introduction or development of compatible diagnostic procedures.