Meningitis kills; Please vaccinate students

This is a stressful time for students – worrying if they’ll be able to make the grade, pass a class or figure out what comes next for them after graduation. However, there is something more serious happening around universities across the state that students and parents need to be concerned about.

The number of meningitis cases identified so far this year surpasses the 5-year average of meningococcal disease cases in Florida, with the disease populating mostly around college students. It is of the utmost importance that we make protect our kids by vaccinating them for all types of meningococcal disease.

My daughter, Emily, passed from bacterial meningitis during her sophomore year. She called me one evening complaining about a minor headache. I suggested that she take Motrin and asked her to let me know how she felt in the morning. That next morning, I received a phone call from a hospital informing me that Emily had been admitted during the night and, in a few impossibly short hours, had slipped into a coma. She had contracted meningococcal disease and was being rushed into surgery. It wasn’t long after that that she passed.

Meningococcal disease is one of the most common types of bacterial meningitis. It is a life-threatening bacterial infection that can affect the lining of the brain and spinal cord, or it can cause an infection in the bloodstream – or both. It is caused by five types of meningococcal bacteria: A, B, C, W, and Y. It can attack without warning, and early symptoms can often be mistaken for the flu – high fever, nausea, vomiting, headache, exhaustion, and a purplish rash. It is easy to spread from person to person through shared saliva or respiratory droplets and from being in close quarters.

Florida universities do not require the meningococcal meningitis vaccine but do recommend it – but just for the A, C, W, and Y strands. While this made sense years ago since meningitis B was so rare, that is not the case now.

Emily had received “the meningitis shot” when she was 11, and then received a booster dose before she left for college when she was 17. Needless to say, I thought my daughter was protected against this disease. It turned out that the “meningitis shot” only protected her against serogroups A, C, W, and Y. There was no vaccine available in the United States at that time to protect her against serogroup B. My daughter was just 19 when, on Feb. 2, 2013, she lost her life to Meningitis B.

Take the time to learn more and find out what you can do to protect your family. By educating both parents and students on meningococcal disease – both its symptoms and the vaccine that can help prevent it – we can save other young people from this deadly but preventable disease.

While the stress of finals and graduation is significant, the danger of meningococcal disease is much greater. Meningococcal disease affects your future far more than a less-than-desirable grade. Encourage your child to get vaccinated for all forms of meningococcal disease.

Alicia Stillman, of Michigan and Florida, is the director of The Emily Stillman Foundation.