The World Health Organisation estimated some time ago that pneumococcal meningitis is responsible for 1.6 million deaths annually, with children under the age of five and, especially, infants under two, being most susceptible to it. Over the last three years, three cases of the illness have been reported in Malta, all in 2005.

In January's issue of Pink, distributed with The Times tomorrow, its PrivateEye section looks into the story of a two-month-old baby whose life was threatened but spared by the lethal bacteria and whose family is still struggling to cope with the aftermath and trying to give their daughter's existence some semblance of normality. They are smiling through the ravages of the illness and so is its victim, who is still slowly learning how to talk at 11 years of age. The New Year brings along with it the need for change but Pink remains constant in the diversity of the topics it treats.

Apart from tackling the subject of resolutions, with RelationTips offering a last-ditch attempt to help us handle them successfully by changing tack, and OnForm looking at the matter from the health and fitness point of view, this month's issue features the works.

The content goes through fashion, from the show-stopping photo shoot to the struggled breakthrough of a local model on the international stage and accessories in the form of spectacular spectacles. It includes women considered to be influential and inspiring, women in the media with a good cause, women in music, women in literature and women in history, as well as a curiosity-arousing, innovative, fat-melting process and a new chef for a new taste in its TableTalk recipes.

Readers are encouraged to continue writing in with their feedback to enjoy a variety of prizes or to try their luck at winning a trip to the UK to experience a stunning hairdo by a celebrity Andrew Collinge hairstylist, courtesy of Chemimart, in collaboration with Pink.

The monthly magazine's executive editors are Fiona Galea Debono and Ariadne Massa. It is designed by Helen Cassar Torreggiani and Joseph Schembri, produced by MediaMaker, published by Allied Newspapers Ltd and printed by Progress Press.