Bacterial Meningitis Case from Vermilion County Suspected

A case of bacterial meningitis may have arisen in northern Vermilion County.

The Vermilion County Health Department says a toddler was taken to Hoopeston Community Memorial Hospital yesterday with symptoms of the sometimes-fatal brain infection - he was airlifted several hours late to Urbana's Carle Hospital. Health administrator Steve Laker won't release the toddler's name or condition.

Bacterial meningitis can be very contagious, spread by contact with nose or throat secretions. And Laker says this particular strain of meningitis bacteria is highly difficult to trace back to a source.

People can be colonized with that; just be carriers of it and don't know they are carriers," said Laker. "What happens is that you get a susceptible individual around somebody who's carrying the organism and there's a transmission, and you have individuals who don't even know they're colonized with it."

Laker says several people in the toddler's family and at a day care facility have been given oral medications to help prevent another meningitis case.