CDC Recommends New Meningitis Shot for Kids

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050527/ap_on_he_me/meningitis_shots/nc:716;_ylt=Ar6cNMt.mYiJwBA4qDMQ7sd34T0D;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl


CHICAGO - Meningitis can strike out of the blue and kill within hours. Leslie Meigs knows because she almost died of it six years ago, when she 8. That's why she wants kids to get the new shot. Federal officials and doctors agree wholeheartedly.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics on Thursday recommended that more than 8 million U.S. children — 11- to 12-year-olds, students entering high school and college freshmen headed for dorm life — get the vaccination.

Although meningococcal meningitis affects only about 3,000 people nationwide each year, it kills a fifth of adolescents who get it.

"This is a very bad disease," said the academy's Dr. Carol J. Baker, an infectious disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. "It's very rapidly progressive in adolescence. You can have an adolescent in a shopping mall at 2 in the afternoon, in the emergency room at 6 in the evening, and death by midnight."

For Meigs, who lives in Houston, it happened when she woke up with a slight fever and later started vomiting.

By nighttime Meigs was hospitalized with a purplish rash caused by tissue damage from the bacteria infiltrating her bloodstream. She became comatose, had kidney failure, and her parents were told she would probably die.

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