Freshmen at higher risk for meningitis
The Meningitis Foundation reports that freshmen are about six times at greater risk to catch meningitis than other college students. The bacterial disease affects about 100 to 125 college students a year.
By Tamara El-Khoury
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service

Ignoring his girlfriend’s pleas to drive him to the hospital, John Kach went to bed March 11, 2000, with what he thought was a severe case of the flu. Even with his fever of 105 and incessant vomiting, Kach had no idea that his body was in for the fight of its life.

The next morning, a barely conscious Kach left Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I., to undergo a series of blood tests at Newport Hospital. It wasn’t until a doctor noticed a rash on Kach’s back and chest that he realized how sick his patient really was.

“I was in such a daze, kind of delirious, in and out of consciousness. In the hospital, when I checked in, I’m passing out while people are asking me questions,” Kach said.After being transferred to Rhode Island Hospital, Kach was diagnosed with meningococcal meningitis, a bacterial disease. Within hours, his kidneys and lungs stopped functioning and doctors put him in a drug-induced coma.

Kach, a basketball player, woke up six weeks later to discover that his right leg had been amputated below the knee along with all his fingers and the toes on his left foot.

With their close living quarters, poor eating habits and stressful lifestyles, college students are particularly vulnerable to meningitis, which affects 3,000 Americans a year, according to the Meningitis Foundation of America. About 100 to 125 of those cases are college students.

Freshmen, especially if they live in the residence halls dorms, are about six times at greater risk than other college students, according to the foundation.

According to Dr. James Turner, a professor of medicine and the executive director of the department of student health at the University of Virginia, meningitis is found in two types: viral and bacterial. Bacterial meningitis, the type Kach had, is the rarer, deadlier form of the disease, killing about 10 percent of the people it affects. Viral meningitis can be treated in a matter of days.

The bacterial form of meningitis is contracted through respiratory secretions and can spread through kissing, coughing or sharing a drinking glass. It is especially dangerous because it spreads so rapidly.

The deadliest part about this disease is that by the time it is diagnosed, it is often too late.

Kach’s initial flu-like symptoms are typical of meningococcal disease and include fever, vomiting, a stiff neck, headache, confusion, exhaustion and a rash.

“Even if you go to a physician or doctor, in the early stages it can be virtually impossible to determine whether it’s the flu or meningococcal disease,” Turner said.

The meningitis bacteria causes swelling and inflammation in the brain and lining of the spinal chord, often leaving survivors deaf or brain-damaged.

Another form of meningococcal disease called cepticemia releases toxins in the blood stream, and results in gangrene in the patient’s extremities, according to Turner. Gangrene caused Kach to lose his leg, fingers and toes.

Kach, now 21, is far from discouraged. He is back in school and training for the Paralympics. After a year and a half of rehabilitation, he is now spreading the word that what happened to him is easily avoidable with just a simple vaccination.

When Kach was an incoming freshman, he planned to get the meningitis shot, which Salve Regina University recommended, but did not require. He asked his doctor for the shot during a routine checkup before coming to college, but the doctor did not have the vaccine in stock. Kach planned to get the shot from the university’s health center, but between classes and basketball practice, he never got around to it.

No states require the meningitis vaccination, but like Salve Regina University, many schools recommend it.

Students living in campus housing in Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania and Connecticut must sign a waiver if they choose not to be vaccinated. Those living in Connecticut residence halls may only refuse vaccination for medical or religious reasons.

Fourteen states have passed legislation requiring universities to make parents aware of the disease and the meningitis vaccination.

One of the main reasons states do not require the shot is economics.

A NOVA documentary that will air on PBS in September notes that it would cost states $130 million a year to vaccinate all college freshmen, which would prevent 40 to 70 cases of the disease. For that cost, about two to four lives a year would be saved.

“It’s not a cost benefit to society to require all college students to be vaccinated ... That’s the hard, cold reality, the medical economic reality,” Turner said.