According to reports, every year there are about 50,000 Australian children, who visit the doctor with complaints of fever.

A new study conducted by researchers evinced that some doctors do not accord enough importance to fevers. They have been underestimating the possibility of grave diseases in children who are bought to the hospital with fever.

The study which took into consideration 16,000 children revealed that doctors had a problem in instantly diagnosing nearly 1/3 of their patients who were afflicted with life threatening illnesses.

According to the author of the study, Professor Jonathan Craig from the University of Sydney and Westmead Children's Hospital, doctors need to improve in the manner in which they diagnose children for the very first time.

He stated that fever is fairly common in children. However, he declares, "What we showed was that as expected sometimes children who have serious bacterial illness like urinary tract infection, bacteria in the blood or pneumonia, don't receive antibiotics at the time they present".

He however, maintains that the entire onus for this cannot be placed on doctors. It represents the difficulties faced by doctors to diagnose patients as soon as they come to the hospital.