Transcript
Announcer:
This is VacciNation on ReachMD. On this episode, we’ll explore how we can turn awareness into action when it comes to meningitis B prevention with Dr. Paul Offit. He’s the Director of the Vaccine Education Center and a member in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Let’s hear from Dr. Offit now.
Dr. Offit:
Certainly, I think as the physician sees a child in late adolescence, this should always be part of that discussion, whether it's meningococcal vaccine, human papillomavirus vaccine, or updates on the diphtheria tetanus pertussis vaccine. That should always be part of the discussion. That's the vaccine discussion for adolescents. Meningococcal serogroup B should always be part of that.
I think before a child goes to college, this is a conversation that should happen. And I think all you need to do is look at what happened before we had a vaccine. Really, only about a year before we had a vaccine, there was an outbreak at Drexel University which killed one young girl. And there was an outbreak in Princeton, which involved up to about a dozen people who had meningococcus—serious, hospitalizable meningococcus. In that particular instance in Princeton, everybody got together—the students did—and they set up their own clinics to give a vaccine, which hadn't been licensed yet in this country but was about to be licensed. And so you could, under compassionate use protocol, give that vaccine.
When people saw the disease at Princeton's campus or Drexel's campus, they couldn't wait to get that vaccine. More than 90 percent of the people who were offered that vaccine got it, because now they feared the disease. But we shouldn't have to wait that long.
Announcer:
That was Dr. Paul Offit sharing practical strategies for supporting meningitis B prevention in routine care. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit VacciNation on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!
