St. Joseph's Regional Health Center confirmed Tuesday that one of the two Texas A&M students diagnosed with bacterial meningitis was released from the hospital. The other student is still recovering in a local hospital as A&M prepares to debrief and review the University procedures in place for handling the outbreak.
Mike Krenz, an assistant director for the Office of the Dean of Student Life said, "We meet after any type of emergency situation to debrief."
Numerous departments work together during emergency health situations.
"Whenever there is something of a health nature, we always work with the Brazos County Health Department and the Student Health Services and the Office of Police Security," Krenz said. "We at the department of resident life don't make the health decisions."
The state health department worked with the doctors at Beutel in their response to the outbreak.
"We talked at length with the state health department," said Dr. Eaves-Hood, the deputy chief of staff and preventative medicine director at Beutel. "They recommended...clean hygiene in rooms and a good general cleaning of the shared bathrooms of those who were sick; and [cleaning] high-contact areas like door handles."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bacterial meningitis is an infection of the fluid of a person's spinal cord and the fluid that surrounds the brain. The bacteria are spread through the exchange of respiratory and throat secretions.
Due to privacy laws Eaves-Hood could not comment on how the two Aggies contracted the disease, but she was able to comment on possible ways it could be spread.
"I learned many new ways of how students share saliva; sharing drinks seems to be the most common," Eaves-Hood said. "Especially having one common vessel to drink out of."
In response to the disease, Beutel offers free exams and vaccines.
"We had 386 students evaluated last week specifically due to exposure risk," Eaves-Hood said. "We gave 367 doses of prophylactic antibiotic. We gave somewhere between 650 and 700 vaccines, and are still booked on giving that and have ordered a couple hundred more doses."
Beutel keeps antibiotics and vaccines for deadly diseases on stock for disease outbreak occasions.
"We had something like 500 doses of the antibiotic so we more than covered the students who needed it," Eaves-Hood said. "The medicine was provided at no cost."
"This is the first known 'outbreak' on our campus ever, as far as what has been documented," she said.
With an official debriefing approaching within a week, Beutel and the Department of Resident Life are evaluating their efforts during the first outbreak of bacterial meningitis in Texas A&M's recorded history.
"We were able to notify the potentially affected students within a day of finding out," Krenz said. "We were able to notify the residents of the resident hall and the University staff notified the students in the classes; later in that day there was a press release. Start to finish probably within 12 hours of diagnosis... I think it was very effective."
Eaves-Hood said that Beutel effectively handled the disease, but that improvements could be made.
"I think we learned that we can improve how we communicate, face to face would be better than trying to use mass e-mail," Eaves-Hood said. "We have some logistics to take care of, but overall we were able to see a large amount of students in a short time."
"We have to give a major gold star to the EMS crew who brought in the first students," she said. "By 8:15 in the morning we knew what we were dealing with, before 11 a.m. we were giving out our first doses of antibiotic. I have to give credit where credit is due and having an EMS crew in the building definitely made a difference."
Dean Bresciani of student affairs will call a meeting by the end of the week to officially debrief the University's handling its first case of bacterial meningitis.
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