SCOTT COUNTY HEALTH OFFICIALS INVESTIGATE MENINGITIS DEATH

Anyone who was in contact with a 5-year-old Scott City girl who died of meningitis should contact the Scott or Cape Girardeau counties health departments, their doctor or a hospital.

Kay Griffin, nursing supervisor for the Scott County Health Department, said the child became ill at a Scott City day care center on July 6. She was taken to Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau, where she was diagnosed as having meningitis. She was immediately transported to St. Louis Children's Hospital, where she died the next day.

Health officials said no other cases of the highly contagious disease have been reported in Scott or Cape Girardeau counties since the girl's death. However, they cautioned that the 10-day incubation period for the disease won't end until Friday.

Health officials are still trying to determine how the girl contracted the disease.

The name of the girl wasn't released by authorities at the request of her mother. Call the Scott County Health Department at 545-3583 or the Cape County Public Health Center at 335-7846 for help in determining whether you or child may have been in contact with the girl.

The disease attacks the protective membranes, or meninges, that cover the brain and spinal cord. The symptoms are similar to those of the common cold or influenza. They include a fever, headache, vomiting, and rash. If not treated promptly, the disease worsens quickly, and can lead to serious illness and death.

The disease affects children and adults, but is especially serious in infants, children, teenagers, and college-age people.

"It all happened so fast," said Griffin. "She was diagnosed at noon, July 6, and she died the following morning. Meningitis is a serious and life-threatening disease, but we do not usually see it act this fast, even in children, or for it to result in a sudden death."

When the hospital notified Griffin of the meningitis diagnosis, she immediately contacted the day care center, which notified the parents of the other children who attend the center.

Griffin said 60 day-care-center students and the day-care staff and workers were given an antibiotic that reduces the chances of contracting the disease. In addition, the antibiotic was also administered to family members, relatives, friends, and anyone else who may have come in recent contact with the child.

Griffin said timing was urgent. "Anyone exposed to meningitis must be treated with the antibiotic within 24 to 48 hours of the exposure, so we were under the gun to find and administer the antibiotic to anyone who had come in contact with the child," said Griffin. " First we had to locate everyone exposed to the victim, then prepare the antibiotic so it could be given to the children and adults."

Griffin said by noon Friday everyone had been treated. "In fact, we had most of them treated by 7:30 p.m. Thursday," she said.

Cape Girardeau County Public Health Department Director Charlotte Craig said her department received a number of telephone calls about the incident. She said antibiotics were given to people who had been in contact with the victim. Craig said some of the day-care students, family members and relatives were patients of Cape Girardeau doctors.

Because the incubation period does not end until Friday, Griffin said anyone who develops the cold and flu-like symptoms of meningitis, and believes they may have been exposed to the victim, should contact their family physician, hospital emergency room, or the Scott County or Cape Girardeau County health departments.

Griffin said the department will continue to try to find out how the child was exposed to the disease, but, "We may never know how it happened."