About 19,000 people were vaccinated in 1997 after three students contracted meningitis from December 1996 to March 1997. Two of those students died. What is meningitis One of the worst cases to hit a college occurred in 1992 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, when three students died and eight others fell ill. The school subsequently vaccinated all students. Meningitis is a swelling of the tissues that surround the brain and spinal cord.
Viral meningitis is fairly benign, but the more rare bacterial meningitis can be fatal.
Busuttil has the bacterial form. But university officials won't know until later this week which strain he has contracted. The vaccine cannot protect against one of the five forms of bacterial meningitis. Fatigue, headache, nausea and fevers causing body temperature to rise to more than 101 degrees. Victims eventually get severe headaches and stiffness in the neck and back.