THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 1, 1995 TAG: 9504010231
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Sometimes, the germ loses.
Since February, Hampton Roads has worried about meningococcus, a bacteria that can cause serious illness, including meningitis.
The public's questions after the recent death of a local student who was infected with the bacteria remind health officials of a much deadlier bacteria that dropped off the map after a vaccine was introduced a few years ago.
In the late 1980s, Hib - Hemophilus influenza type b - was the leading cause of meningitis in young children.
It's actually not the flu. The disease has kept a misnomer given to it more than a hundred years ago. The flu is caused by a virus; Hib is a bacterial infection.
The bacteria spread through respiratory droplets. More than half of all children who get sick from the infection develop meningitis - a dangerous swelling in the tissue surrounding the brain. During 1986, before the first vaccine arrived, more than 120 children in Virginia got Hib meningitis. Most of them were younger than 15 months.
It's a grave illness. About 6 percent of children who get Hib meningitis die, and about 20 percent of those who live end up with permanent problems like hearing loss or mental retardation from brain damage.
``This vaccine is a real advance. I don't think people realize how much disease has been prevented with this,'' said Dr. Larry K. Pickering, director of Norfolk's Center for Pediatric Research, run by Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters and Eastern Virginia Medical School.
Last year, there were only half a dozen cases of Hib meningitis in Virginia, according to the state Department of Health. Nationally, the numbers dropped from 1,500 cases in children under 5 in 1991 to 301 cases last year, said Sandra J. Holmes, an assistant professor at the pediatric center.
The improvement began in late 1987, when the first vaccine was made available. But the early vaccine didn't work on the underdeveloped immune systems of children under 18 months - the bacteria's prime targets.
The real victory was in 1990, say health officials, when vaccines came out for children as young as 6 weeks. Now, Hib vaccine is part of a regular immunization schedule, with shots at 2, 4 and 6 months, and a booster at about one year. Unlike some vaccines, Hib has almost no reported side effects, except for some swelling and redness at the injection site.
Unfortunately, said Pickering, about a third of very young children don't get the full round of four shots, usually because their parents aren't educated about the need for vaccination or because they don't have access to health care. The vaccine isn't as effective if children don't get all the shots.
Even unvaccinated children benefit from the fact that most of their playmates have had the shots. There's less of the disease around.
But that doesn't make them safe, Holmes said. Hib is still out there.
``I don't want my child to be the child that gets meningitis,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: RICHARD L. DUNSTON
Staff
Samantha Doran, left, comforts her son, Jared Doran, 6 months old,
as nurse Nancy Pendergrast gives him a vaccine to prevent
meningitis. They are at the DePaul Medical Atrium in the office of
Dr. Harvey Kagan.
Chart
SOURCE: Virginia Dept. of Health
KEN WRIGHT/Staff
by CNB