Wider Student Use Is Urged for New Meningitis Vaccine

How many vaccines can we give our children? At this point, how can children recover immune system health if the powers-that-be (pharma companies) keep piling on more and more vaccines.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/health/27vaccine.html

Wider Student Use Is Urged for New Meningitis Vaccine
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: May 27, 2005
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended yesterday wider use of a new meningitis vaccine for adolescents and college freshmen.

The vaccine, sold as Menactra by Sanofi Pasteur, protects against infections caused by meningococcal bacteria. Such infections include a form of meningitis that can be rapidly fatal.


For the first time, the diseases center, a federal agency in Atlanta, recommended that all 11- and 12-year-olds be routinely immunized against meningococcal disease.

The agency also recommended using Menactra to protect high school freshmen or children younger than 15, whichever comes earlier.

In a third recommendation, the agency recommended that all college freshmen living in dormitories be immunized against meningococcal disease. The new recommendation strengthened an earlier one that said freshmen should consider such protection.

Freshmen living in close quarters of dormitories are at a higher risk for meningococcal disease compared with peers the same age who are not at college.

About 3,000 people in the United States experience meningococcal disease each year, and 300 of them die, the agency said. Up to 15 percent of those affected may suffer permanent disabilities like hearing loss, amputation of limb or brain damage.

The recommendations are "much comprehensive and much more directive" than earlier ones, said Dr. William Schaffner, who is chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

The recommendation does not include all people ages 11 through 19 because the supply of Menactra is limited, Dr. Schaffner said.

The vaccine was licensed in January and is given in a single shot. Experts expect it to offer longer protection than earlier meningococcal vaccines.

Menactra does not protect against type B meningococcal infection, for which no vaccine is licensed or available in the United States, the agency said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed the recommendations.
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