Meningococcal Outbreak Not Likely, Officials Say

By AP

PORTLAND (AP) Oregon health officials say there is no indication of a large outbreak of meningococcal disease, despite the recent death of a McMinnville teenager and the hospitalization of four children in Portland.

Dr. Paul Cieslak, communicable disease manager with the Oregon Department of Human Services, said the bacterial illness made 56 people sick in 2005, killing three of them. In 2004, four of the 61 people who caught the disease died.

The illness, which can prove fatal in a matter of hours, killed Drew Ottley, 18, last week. It has also sickened two other McMinnville residents, an infant and a man in his 40s.

Those three cases and an infant from Hillsboro were found to be connected. Cieslak declined to say how the illness might have spread among the four, citing confidentiality. Family members, however, say the two infants Keenan Tommila and Cavan Franklin are cousins. The disease is not easily transmitted but can be passed by coughing or kissing.

So far, Portland hospitals are treating at least four children for the disease. Tommila is in fair condition at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.

The others are in Legacy Emanuel Children’s Hospital: Franklin is in serious condition; Mikila Solberg, 8, of Vernonia, Ore., is in fair condition; and Gabriel L’Aime, 6 months, of Kalama, is in serious condition.

Symptoms of meningococcal disease include a high fever with a headache, a stiff neck and a purplish blotchy rash. In 1994, Oregon experienced a “hyper-epidemic” of the disease, with cases soaring to 143.