TX College Students Under 30 Required to Get Meningitis Vaccine

KTEN ^ | December 14, 2011 | Jennifer French

[Altariel]

DENISON, TX--College students may have to visit the doctor before they enroll next semester. The State of Texas now requires all students under 30 to get a meningitis vaccine.

Starting in January 2012, Grayson County College students will have to follow suit. Those who have already been vaccinated only need to show a proof of immunization.

"We really need to have them immunized and have proof of immunization," Shelle Cassell said, Grayson County College Director of Marketing/Public Information. There is an exception process that the state has put in place if you have religious beliefs or if you have a compromised medical condition."

The vaccination has always been required for students who live in residence halls. The Texas legislature recently extended the requirement to all students under the age of 30.

[GeronL]

big nanny grubbyment

[Clock King]

Yep. B/c we all know that 30yo college students NEVER mix it up with 30yo non-college students. Yeah right, legislators.

Damn control freaks.

[srmorton]

I would tend to agree with you, except that, in this case, such a requirement is not a bad idea. The organism against which this vaccine is directed is Neisseria meningitidis, which can be found in the throat of 10% of "normal" people. It causes an epidemic form of meningitis that can be rapidly fatal. The problem arises when people who are from an area of the country where one strain is common come in contact with those who are from an area where another strain is more common, such as occurs in the military or in a university. The possibility of their acquiring this deadly disease from contact with a strain to which they are not accustomed is very real. I would much rather have the vaccine than run the risk of getting meningitis!

[garandgal]

There have been several fatal cases recently around here. The one I remember the most was a healthy young man who attended a class that ended at 4:00 where he appeared fine to everyone; he took himself to the ER at about 9:00 PM, and was dead before morning.

Scary! And it seems it usually is like that...fine one minute, deathly ill the next.

[Talisker]

srmorton: The possibility of their acquiring this deadly disease from contact with a strain to which they are not accustomed is very real. I would much rather have the vaccine than run the risk of getting meningitis!

garandgal: Scary! And it seems it usually is like that...fine one minute, deathly ill the next.

Absolutely - I would rather be chained up and vaccinated every hour of the day, and I think everyone should agree with this. Why, people have been struck down in the street, in mid-sentence. Women and children are hit the hardest, fastest, most unexpected and suffer the most. It especially strikes most unexpectedly, out of the blue, against people with the most going for them. The very idea that the entirety of the population shouldn't be scanned, mapped vaccinated, tracked and repeated every month of their lives is simply mass murder. And of course, anyone who is against this threatens everyone else and should be stopped immediately and jailed.

Groveling shill jerks. :: spit ::

[x_plus_one]

48 hours was all it took for a university of kansas student to lose both arms and legs to meningitisless thant en years ago. It is common practice for universities to require vaccination of in coming freshmen in order to provide a safe living/working environment. This bug cant be cured, only prevented and college students are the biggest victims.

Do you let the kids decide if they want to go to the trouble of seeking out a menningitis vaccine before enrolling in college? They wont lift a finger if given a choice. They are more interested in video games and beer.

[srmorton]

I have been teaching clinical microbiology for almost 30 years and worked in the microbiology department of several hospitals before I began teaching so I know what I am talking about. I have seen young people come into the ER and be dead the next day because they did not seek treatment quickly enough. Just one case of this particular form of meningitis can cause a small epidemic in a college or university. The danger is real enough that students would be required to take prophylactic antibiotics to insure that they do not get it since the vaccination would do no good once they have been exposed to the organism.

A similar case in point is the HIB vaccine that is now required for infants. Meningitis due to Hemophilus influenzae Type B used to be a common cause of death for infants aged 2 months to 2 years. We now almost never see it, except for children of those parents who believed the now totally discredited hype about vaccinations causing autism.

I am usually for as little government intervention in our lives as possible, and, perhaps, even in this case, since we are talking about adults who can make decisions for themselves, they should have the option of getting the vaccine or not. I am just of the opinion that when a simple vaccine can prevent a deadly disease one should have the good sense to take advantage of it. A knee-jerk "I hate government and anything it does." reaction is no more intelligent than blindly agreeing with everything that the government does.

[rfreedom4u]

My 21 year old daughter just registered for classes in Killeen and was told she had to get this. She asked the registrar, ‘Do we live in a communist country now or what?’

[TheOldLady]

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