The Cough that Kills S ome things in life come at you totally unexpected. The death of a friend's son was pure shock. He was age 28, just married and in good health. What killed him kills tens of thousands of people each year. Tragically, many of these deaths are preventable.
Pneumococcal disease is an infection caused by bacteria.
It is a serious illness. The bacteria can attack different parts of the body. When they invade the lungs, they cause the most common kind of bacterial pneumonia. When the same bacteria attack blood cells, they cause an infection called bacteremia. And in the brain, they cause meningitis.