A 10-year-old Park Ridge girl died Thursday from a form of bacterial meningitis, bringing to three the number of Chicago-area deaths believed caused by the virulent bacteria in three weeks.
In addition to those who have died, four others remain hospitalized with the potentially fatal disease–a 3-year-old girl from Evanston, a 10-year-old girl from St. Charles, a 57-year-old woman from Joliet and a 23-year-old man from Fox Lake.
Because the cases are scattered geographically, no one is suggesting that this is an outbreak of the kind that required the vaccination of 18,000 students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992 after three students died and eight others fell ill, said spokesman Tom Schafer of the Illinois Department of Public Health.
But if the current rate continues, 1997 will be the second consecutive year the number of meningitis cases statewide has been above average, Schafer said.
“We are at 115 cases now, and last year at this time we were at 96, and that was unusually high,” Schafer said. “We ended up with 142 cases last year, well above the five-year average of 115. And we have three more months to go. We could surpass last year’s number.”
The most recent child to die, Lydia Montejo of Park Ridge, had been running a temperature for three days, said Resurrection Hospital spokesman Steve Sonn.
She seemed to be better Thursday morning until she took a severe turn for the worse and was taken to the hospital by her parents, said Supt. Frank Schroeder of Park Ridge Elementary School District 64.
Lydia, a 4th grader at Roosevelt Elementary School, arrived at the Northwest Side hospital at 10:30 a.m. and died at 1:45 p.m., Sonn said.
The quickness of her death suggested she had bacterial meningococcemia, a fast-moving illness in which the bacteria that causes meningitis attacks the blood rather than the brain, Schafer said.
A letter has gone home to the parents of Roosevelt’s 120 4th graders. School will be open tomorrow and a crisis team will be on hand to talk with the children, Schroeder said.
Although the school is already “meticulously clean,” Schroeder said, extra cleaning will be done to reduce the already small risk of spreading the illness.
Gathered Thursday outside Roosevelt, children expressed grief and parents said they were calm but cautious.
“A face that you see in the hallways is never going to be there again,” said Carolyn Schwartz, 11, a 6th grader at Roosevelt. “Some people are absent for one day, but now this person, she’s never going to be there.”
“It’s unbelievable that there has actually been a death in the school,” said Adrianna Stasiuk, 11, also in the 6th grade at Roosevelt. “It’s so sad. It’s scary.”
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Renate Stark, the mother of a 3rd grader and 6th grader at the school, said she was not worried about sending her children to school because of the low risk of transmission.
“While it causes concern, I don’t think there is a need to be that concerned,” Stark said.
Bacterial meningitis is spread through saliva or mucus and can be transmitted through coughing or sneezing, some forms of kissing, or by sharing drinking cups, straws or cigarettes.
About 5 to 10 percent of the population carries the bacteria at any given time. Children are more likely to become ill because they have not built up immunity. Symptoms include fever, a stiff neck, a rash and sometimes disorientation.
The other two children who died are Marcus Mills, 11, and Ian Henley, 5, both from the West Side of Chicago. Public health officials do not think those two deaths are related.
A 3-year-old girl who lives in Evanston but spends time with relatives on the Northwest Side was diagnosed with the illness Monday at Bethany Hospital and transferred to Mt. Sinai Medical Center. She is in critical condition and her relatives have been given preventive antibiotics.
The Fox Lake man is hospitalized in serious condition in Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee. The woman in good condition at Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet is the grandmother of a grade school child in Rockdale, and letters have gone home to the parents in the school, said Gil Wold, spokesman for the Will County Health Department.