health
Claudia Gil was just 18 when meningococcus attacked her body and died within hours.
Two years later, the university student is warning everyone to be on the lookout for this condition.
After returning home from a long holiday in Queensland, a New South Wales woman was overcome with fatigue, her ears became extremely sensitive to sound, and her ears were ringing in her head.
Her neck stiffened, she vomited, and she passed out.
The young woman was rushed to the hospital where doctors determined she had a potentially fatal meningococcal type B bacterial infection.
Doctors told her that if she had arrived at the hospital late, there was a good chance she would have died.
Her recovery required five nights in the hospital and several weeks of rest, and she slowly returned to work and study. Two years after Ms. Gill joined the company, she began to suffer from severe headaches on a regular basis.
Once she was discharged from the hospital, she wanted to find a community of people affected by the disease and learn what had hit her body.
From there, Gill started talking to the community and advocacy groups and realized she could be a good test case for advocacy around the disease.
“It was pretty scary because the symptoms came on so quickly,” Gill said.
She wants people to be aware of the symptoms so they can act quickly if they suspect they are infected.
Gill only had a mild rash, which is often associated with meningococcal disease and tends to be a later symptom.
The rash was followed by a gradual increase in sensitivity to light and sound, neck stiffness, nausea, back stiffness, vomiting, and complete body stiffness and headaches.
“If the rash had appeared earlier, we could have taken care of it sooner. But that's why it's so important to know all the symptoms,” she said.
Meningococcus is a type of bacteria that can enter the bloodstream and cause sepsis.
In Australia, vaccination against the A, C, W, and Y variants is targeted at newborns, 14-16 year-olds, people with asplenia and hyposplenism, complement deficiency, and people being treated with eculizumab. Free.
Mr. Gill was infected with meningococcal type B. The vaccine will be provided free of charge to people with the above immune conditions and to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander newborns.
Meningococcal deaths in Australia make news because vaccines are widely available, but also because the disease develops rapidly.
Last week, one adult in Western Australia died from the disease and two others were hospitalized. Although the cases were not related, it was the first fatal accident in the state since 2020.
Gill studies in Newcastle but is originally from Wollongong.
In late 2022, 23-year-old Brayden Chater died from meningococcal type B in Wollongong, leaving him brain dead. His condition rapidly deteriorated within 24 hours, going from just feeling like he had a fever to having convulsions and being unresponsive.
Doctors were unable to tell where Gill contracted the bacteria.
Across Australia, there were 143 laboratory-confirmed cases of all variants of meningococcus in 2023. Infection was most common in young children and 15- to 19-year-olds.
New South Wales had the highest number of infections last year (36), but the Northern Territory and South Australia had the highest incidence per capita, at around 1 per 100,000 people. Ta.
As of 2024, 31 people have been confirmed to have been infected, with the highest number in South Australia with a total of 9 cases.