Student’s Death Prompts Fears of Epidemic : Officials Discount Meningitis Peril

The death of a Granada Hills High School student from an infection tentatively diagnosed as a form of meningitis prompted many calls to county health officials from students and parents worried about the potential for an epidemic, health officials said Tuesday.

But the officials said there was little danger that the disease would spread.

The student, Stacy Baron, 17, left school Friday morning feeling ill, said Dr. Helen Hale, director of student medical services for the Los Angeles Unified School District. The girl died early Saturday morning at Holy Cross Hospital, said Dean Gilmour, a Los Angeles County coroner’s spokesman.

Baron’s doctors made a tentative diagnosis of meningococcal meningitis, said Dr. Shirley Fannin, associate deputy director of the communicable disease branch of the county Department of Health Services. Laboratory tests confirming the cause of Baron’s death have not been completed, Gilmour said.

Meningitis, an infection of the membranes that sheathe the brain and spinal cord, produces headaches, nausea, and a painful stiff neck. “Meningococcal” refers to one of several species of bacteria that can cause such an infection.

Meningococci bacteria are very common, Fannin said. In winter, “one out of every four people will have the bacteria in their noses,” she said, but most people are resistant to the disease.

Treated With Antibiotics

When meningococcal meningitis does occur, it must be treated promptly with antibiotics, Fannin said. Nine cases out of 10 are caught and treated, but about 10% prove fatal. The disease can strike any age group.

Fannin stressed that the appearance of one case “is not something to panic about.”

The disease is only contagious in crowded living conditions, such as those found in an army barracks, a home or sometimes in day care centers, she said. In those instances, a preventive two-day treatment with an antibiotic is advised for those in contact with a victim.

But antibiotics are not recommended by the county for schoolmates of a victim, she said.

Fannin said that the number of meningococcal meningitis cases in Los Angeles County has increased this winter--there were 24 in December, contrasted with 10 in December, 1985--but all of the cases have been isolated.

School health officials have called parents of students in Baron’s classes, informing them of the death and advising them to contact their family physicians, Clark said.

The Health Department has begun sending letters to physicians in the community informing them of the fatality and instructing them to watch for meningitis symptoms in their patients, Fannin said.