Students urged to get meningitis vaccine

As a sophomore at the University of North Texas, Lydia Evans helped incoming freshmen adjust to the swirl of campus life. One of her tasks was to warn them of something she hadn't heard in her first year — the risk of bacterial meningitis, especially if they lived in the dorms.

Weeks later, that same illness nearly took her life.

In September 2001, she lost both her legs below the knee, as well as portions of nine fingers.

Today she's working harder than ever to urge other college students to get vaccinated against meningococcal meningitis before they head to campus.

Evans was relatively lucky. This past July, a 15-year-old Bothell boy died from bacterial meningitis within days of his first symptoms. Drew Albrecht, a football player, came home from a team workout on a Monday night with a headache so severe he said it felt like his head was "exploding." He was hospitalized and died the following Wednesday.

Since 1991, studies have documented dozens of outbreaks of meningococcal disease, including those on the nation's college campuses involving students who live in dormitories. The incidence was relatively small, but the studies persuaded the federal government's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to recommend in 1999 that college freshmen be vaccinated against meningococcal disease if they intend to live in dormitories or residence halls.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports about 2,600 cases of the disease nationwide every year, about 125 of them in college students. Between five and 15 of the students die, while 12 to 20 suffer permanent hearing loss, brain damage or loss of limbs.

"[Vaccination is] the best gift you can give a child before he goes off to college," said Lynn Bozof, who lost a 20-year-old son to meningococcal infection six years ago.

Bozof and her husband, Alan, helped found the National Meningitis Association to alert college students and their parents to the threat of meningococcal disease. They've lobbied state and federal lawmakers to require better education efforts so that more students get vaccinated.

Bacterial villain

Meningococcal disease is caused by bacteria called Neisseria meningitis, which live in the noses and throats of about 15 percent of the population. The bacteria become dangerous only when they invade the central nervous system and bloodstream, causing an infection that can be rapidly fatal. Researchers don't yet know what causes the usually benign bacteria to become so deadly.

Meningitis symptoms can include headache, high fever, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, discomfort looking into bright light, confusion and sleepiness.

Crowded living conditions seem to be a contributing factor in the spread of the infection. But it's not as contagious as a common cold. It can be spread from an infected person by coughing, kissing or the sharing of drinking glasses and silverware.

"There is something about the close living quarters in a dormitory that makes students in that setting more likely to be infected with this type of bacteria," said Dr. David Buhner, medical director of the Dallas County health department. Such cases are rare, but preventable, he said.

Costly vaccine

"We explain during freshman orientation about the dangers of the disease and the efficacy of the vaccine," said Reginald Bond, executive director of the school's Student Health and Wellness Services. "But it's a pretty expensive vaccine, so parents and students have to make their own decision."

The vaccine, which lasts three or four years, protects against four of the five common strains of meningococcal meningitis. About 10 percent of bacterial meningitis cases are fatal.

Survival depends upon how quickly a victim gets medical attention and how quickly a diagnosis is made and antibiotics are dispensed.

"My son called home, complaining of a migraine headache, and I told him what to do because migraines run in my husband's family," recalls Lynn Bozof, whose son was stricken in 1998. "When he got to the emergency room, the doctors missed it. They thought it was a little virus until he was covered with a purple rash. He died 26 days later."

In Lydia Evans' case, she began feeling nauseated one morning in her sophomore year at UNT. That she was stricken was unusual not only for the fact that she wasn't a freshman, but that she was living in a sorority house, not a larger, congested dormitory.

Initially, she fended off friends' efforts to get medical help, she says.

"I threw up 17 times before I let them take me to the hospital," recalls Evans. "I had a 105 fever, and I couldn't stand up when we got there 12 hours later. And I was covered with little purple spots. I had no idea what it was."

She was treated with antibiotics and transferred to Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, where she remained in a coma for two weeks. At one point, her family and friends planned her funeral.

"They told us there was less than a 3 percent chance that she would make it," says her mother, Elizabeth Evans. "They told us to say goodbye to her, and we did."

But after two weeks in a coma, Lydia Evans says, she awoke and was stunned to learn what she had gone though. Her liver and kidneys had nearly failed, her lungs had collapsed and her feet and hands were blackened from lack of circulation, she says.

"I was shocked," she recalls. "But I never figured out how I got infected."

A grueling recovery

It took nearly two dozen surgeries and months of rehabilitation, but Evans returned to UNT the next fall, walking on prosthetic legs and able to type and write with shortened fingers.

The soon-to-be senior, who is majoring in international relations and political science, was changed in other ways, too.

She switched her career plans from becoming a lawyer to being a lobbyist for people with disabilities. She has also set up a foundation called Strides for Awareness, which is raising money to cover the cost of vaccinations for incoming UNT students. Last spring, the group raised $3,000 in a 5K run. This summer, she is interning with the Washington, D.C., office of the Landmine Survivors Network, an advocacy group for the removal of land mines around the globe and for the rights of people injured by them.

"Now I understand what it's like for people who are disabled," Evans says. "But I don't think of myself as disabled. I go to school, I date and I do whatever a normal college student does. I just get a better parking spot."