If you know students at UW-Madison, encourage them to get vaccinated for meningitis B

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/health-med-fit/uw-madison-to-offer-vaccine-for-rare-strain-of-meningitis/article_7f2a402f-f14b-567d-b18b-c8399fe27269.html

Two students contracted the disease and are recovering.

I have posted this before, I still think it’s a powerful article, I always get the “mom empathy chills” when I read it.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/04/02/santa-clara-university-meningitis-survivor-returns-to-school/

All mine got the Trumenba vaccine, no question, no problems.

Thank you!!! I have a current student there, who had gotten the regular vaccination a few years ago – I have reminded him to go get the new one for strain B. My polite reminders wil get more shrill if he doesn’t follow up!

@CADREAMIN On the class of 17 thread, there was a recent post about schools not accepting Trumbena.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19987228/#Comment_19987228 I have no idea why.

how can you not protect yourself? a lot of people either think they are immune to infectious disease or think the vaccines cause them to get the pathogen. I hear this nonsense all the time.
also if Meningitis, measles, zika etc start spreading " I just wash my hands a lot" does not work either. should you wash your hands?? yes…will it prevent you from getting sick from a person sneezing as the walk by you with the flu or getting meningitis from microscopic droplets on the cafeteria tray …no!

Gosh, it’s been ten years since I sat in on the Parents sessions for UW’s summer orientation and heard the story from the presenter about how one OOS parent threatened his kid about not coming home for Thanksgiving (ie no plane ticket…) unless he got around to the then current vaccination. Hopefully all parents of students at all schools pay attention to vaccinations.

@Mom2aphysicsgeek (@kac425) that conversation was between a parent and an obviously uniformed and oblivious head of healthcare at some school. It is dangerous for people to think a school would not take Trumemba. This is not true.

From the post:
“i was chatting with the head of the health clinic and found out that bizarrely, they do NOT accept the immunization Trumenba—there were 4 alternatives (one of which was Menactra).”

Menactra is the “regular meningitis vaccine” that we have given our kids for years, not for Type B meningitis. So they were discussing the regular meningitis vaccine, not type B meningitis. Frankly it is scary that the head of healthcare didn’t clarify that with the parent — it seems to indicate head of healthcare had not heard of Trumemba or that there are two different strains of meningitis that vaccines address - ugh, that would concern me.

Meningococcal conjugate vaccine (MCV4), sold as Menactra, MenHibrix, and Menveo is the one we are most familiar with and what kids get when they are younger and before college.

Serogroup B meningococcal vaccine are the newer vaccines to address Type B Meningitis, which have been the recent outbreaks at colleges the last several years, sold as Trumenba and Bexsero.

Trumbena has been proven more slightly more effective than Bexsero, and takes 3 vaccines rather than two. But both are highly effective and students should get whichever vaccine is available to them.

This should not just be for students UW-Madison but every student at every college

I had quiet an adventure this summer finding the shot for my son. Nobody knew what I was talking about. Even doctors. I finally found a doctor at a pharmacy clinic that knew about it and ordered it for me.

D got the B shots this summer. Don’t want to mess with that one, meningitis of either type is no joke.