Health officials and parents who have lost children to the deadly meningococcal disease say the best way to prevent more young people from tragically dying from the disease is to get them vaccinated.
They are hoping the Centers for Disease Control will make a routine recommendation for use of Meningococcal group B (Men B) vaccines for middle school entry – college freshmen age when a panel of the federal organization meets later this month.
Scott Parkhurst of Rhododendron whose 17-year-old son, Jake, died last year from the disease, will testify during the meeting June 24 and 25 in Atlanta. Otherwise healthy and vibrant, he would have graduated high school this month, but became ill in March 2014 and died just a few days later from the disease.
“It shouldn’t happen,” Parkhurst said. “He was a healthy, strong, 17-year-old kid, a good kid. It just changes your life, forever. I think about him every day.”
The panel’s recommendation comes after an outbreak at the University of Oregon sickened at least five and killed one student. Despite the outbreak, less than half of the undergraduate students had received vaccinations as of March, said Dr. Dawn Nolt, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Doernbecher Children's Hospital and is an associate professor at Oregon Health & Science University.
A recommendation from the CDC could help subside some of the hesitancy around getting vaccinated in Oregon, which has long had a history of low vaccination rates, said Nolt. The outbreak at Princeton, comparatively, resulted in a much higher rate of vaccinations later.
“We are a little puzzled,” she said of the low vaccination rate at the U of O. There is some distrust of vaccinations in Oregon and concern about side effects. But there’s not a valid argument that the vaccine is worse than the disease, which has a short incubation period and has been known to kill perfectly healthy teens.
“Prevention is always key in a healthy life and since we have a vaccine that is effective and that is safe we should definitely advise its use in populations that are at risk of getting this,” she said. “We as infectious disease specialists would support the routine recommendation of this vaccine in adolescents.”
If the CDC does make such a recommendation, it would allow OHSU to participate with other public health experts at Oregon’s 53 colleges and universities, said Tammy Bray, dean of the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University.
But because of the costs of the new vaccine and the low rates of infection, Parkhurst isn’t confident the CDC panel will approve the recommendation.
He had to take his older son, who is nearing 22, to Canada to get vaccinated when he switched colleges before this country approved the drug in October. And he doesn’t want another parent to lose their child to the deadly disease.
“I want people to feel some of the pain that I have and understand that could be your niece your granddaughter any relative, any friend,” he said. “Every time I hear another person dying it’s reliving what I’ve been through.”
Nolt said the disease is not typically on the forefront of parents’ minds. “Meningitis in and of itself is not usually a high cause of concern among parents until there is an outbreak at their school or in their community,” she said, adding that the vaccine would ease that worry in the event of an outbreak. “Then you don’t have to worry about it all.”
Shelby can be reached at [email protected].
