A few weeks after an AU student became ill with meningitis, several people think students should consider getting vaccinated against the disease.
AU does not require students to get the meningitis vaccine, while colleges in Maryland and Virginia require it of some students, The Eagle previously reported. Maryland state law mandates all college students who live on campus to get vaccinated unless they sign a waiver, according to Tina Thorburn, a registered nurse at the University of Maryland's University Health Center.
While some states require the vaccine, Thorburn believes students should be able to decide on their own whether to get the vaccine because it does not protect against all strands of the disease, she said. The vaccine does not prevent Type B meningitis, which 24 percent of college students with meningitis have had since 1998, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"I made my daughter get it," Thorburn said. "My take on it is it's not going to hurt them if they get it, and it could save their life if they do get it."
Meningitis is a disease that causes the inflammation of the fluid tissue around the brain and spinal cord and is caused by viral or bacterial infection. The AU student, who Student Health Center Director Bethany Chiaramonte previously said is doing fine, had bacterial meningitis.
While AU officials would not say whether the vaccine would have prevented this student's illness, University spokesman Todd Sedmak said, "Just because you get a shot doesn't mean you're protected fully."
Two students at UMD have had meningitis recently, Thorburn said, and one of those cases would have been prevented by the vaccine.
Ryan Pike, development director for the Meningitis Foundation of America, was struck with a form of bacterial meningitis while he was a student at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. The illness put him in the hospital for two months, he said.
He had lesions on his body - "My veins were breaking. My blood had nowhere to go, so it went to my skin," he said - and gangrene, which occurs when there is not enough blood flow. Pike had nine toes amputated from his foot and had a piece of muscle from his back wrapped around his ankle, and there was a hole in the roof of his mouth.
Pike thinks people should be allowed to decide whether to get the meningitis vaccine, since some do not believe in vaccines. However, he said, "I guarantee that if someone saw what I went through when I went through it ... they might think twice about that."
Pike did not even know about meningitis or the vaccine before he became ill. He said he believes more than anything that people should know about the disease.
"I definitely believe, if you're going to college, you should be aware that this disease is relatively common in college freshmen and there's a vaccine for it," he said. "Most [victims] don't end up like me. Most end up dead."
The Student Health Center offers the vaccine for $80, Health Center administrative assistant Alex Adley previously told The Eagle. Sedmak was unaware how many AU students have received it, and Health Center officials were unavailable for comment.
"It is a relatively painless injection," Thorburn said. "Everyone says, 'Is that it?"
