Meningitis Puts College Students at Risk
The close quarters, the shared drinks, the all-nighters that weaken your immune system, and other aspects of your college lifestyle can make you more susceptible to meningitis, a virulent disease that, in its bacterial form, can kill you within days and sometimes even hours. If you’re lucky enough to survive, you still stand a 20 percent chance of suffering brain damage, arm and leg amputations, deafness, and vision loss.
Meningitis, an inflammation of the membranes and cerebrospinal fluid near the brain and spinal cord, can strike in both bacterial and viral form. The disease is transmitted by direct contact and through your saliva when you sneeze, cough or kiss.
It’s often difficult to diagnose because its symptoms are similar to the flu: high fever, severe headaches, stiff neck, rash, nausea, vomiting and sensitivity to light.
Reported cases of meningitis are rare but more common on college campuses, where the cramped quarters of shared dorms are ideal breeding grounds for potential outbreaks. States are split on whether to make the vaccination voluntary or mandatory for college students.
Onset of Disease Looks Innocent but Quickly Turns Deadly
Do a quick Google search, and you’ll find numerous accounts of otherwise healthy college students who have died or barely escaped death after contracting meningitis.
ABC News tells the story of Evan Bozof, a baseball player and pre-med student at Georgia Southwestern University. One day in 1998, he thought he was suffering from a migraine; 26 days later, the 20-year-old died after meningococcal meningitis ravaged his body. Both of his legs and arms had been amputated, he had lost all liver and kidney function and seizures led to irreversible brain damage (“For Parents, College Meningitis Deaths Still Evoke Pain,” Sep. 6, 2007).
Then there’s the MSNBC article on Ashley Lee, an 18-year-old at Indiana University Bloomington, who thought she was coming down with the flu (“Killer at College: Meningitis Threatens Students,” Sep. 5, 2007). After vomiting every half hour while at a frat party, she went home to rest. The next day, she collapsed and her family rushed her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with meningococcal meningitis. Two years later, Lee’s still alive, but she’s undergone multiple surgeries, had a foot and three fingers amputated, and she lives with severe and permanent skin damage.
In Bozof’s case, his parents weren’t aware of the meningitis risks or that a simple vaccine could have saved their son. Hoping to spare others the same fate, Bozof’s mother went on to found the National Meningitis Association, which promotes education of the disease and universal vaccination.
In Lee’s case, her mother had taken her to get the vaccine before she left for college, six weeks prior to her contracting the disease, but the vaccine was out of stock at her doctor’s office. Lee, like Bozof’s parents, was unaware of the viciousness of meningitis and kept putting off getting the vaccine once she got to school—and then it was too late.
“I just didn’t know the severity of it,” Lee said in her MSNBC interview. “I thought it was just, like, another vaccination.”
Debating the Need for Mandated Vaccines
ABC News reports that there are 1,400 to 2,800 cases of bacterial meningitis in the United States each year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the death rate for bacterial meningitis—around 13 percent—is more than 20 times higher than that for the measles, the number one childhood killer worldwide.
While some 10 to 20 percent of the population can carry the meningococcal bacteria in their nose or throat, 99.9 percent develop antibodies and never get sick, according to a CDC official quoted by ABC.
Increased awareness of the risks posed by meningitis as well as of the readily available vaccine has ignited a national debate, much of it centered on college campuses.
MSNBC reports that:
- 20 states currently require college students to either get the meningitis vaccination or sign a waiver that says they’ve read about the disease.
- 3 more states mandate the vaccination for college students but allow exemptions for religious or medical reasons.
- 11 states require only that information about the vaccine and the disease be provided on campus.
But a growing grassroots movement, led mainly by parents who have lost or nearly lost a child to the disease, want to see more states require the vaccination. The CDC recommends the meningitis vaccine, Menactra, for young people ages 11 to 18, but only 12 percent got the vaccine last year.
The vaccine is covered by some insurance companies and costs about $120 on college campuses.