The young man who inspired game changer Helen Marshall
Schoolboy Jack Klemich will never know how much he inspired Professor Helen Marshall. But the young footy player helped save so many other kids from the horrors of meningococcal disease.
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It is the small initials JK, scrawled in black ink on the leather of a slightly worn football, that make it so powerful.
That football now sits in the Australian National Museum in Canberra. Those initials belong to the athletic young man in the photograph alongside – the 18-year-old who used to kick that football around an oval in Adelaide with his dad.
Jack Klemich – the son, the brother, the St Peter’s College schoolmate – will never know his footy is on display in Canberra, nor will he ever know how much he contributed to saving so many other lives from the horrors of meningococcal disease.
But his parents, Oren and Gill Klemich, know.
Professor Helen Marshall asked to use their son’s football and photograph for an Australian of the Year exhibition, to represent the impact his death made on her meningococcal research.
The request brought the Klemichs some comfort.
“We went through the horrific tragedy of losing our son Jack in 2009; he was in Year 12 at St Peter’s College,” Oren says, still emotional as he continues to endure what all parents dread most.
“He played football for St Peter’s in the first eighteens at Sacred Heart and woke up on Sunday with a headache, and he died on the Monday.
“That photograph was probably the last one taken of Jack, playing in that game, playing a game he loved.”
Professor Marshall was this week named the 2022 Woman of the Year and today tells how she still clearly remembers first hearing the news about Jack from her daughter, a friend of Jack’s sister.
It was news that would change the course of life for one of Australia’s most celebrated and recognised vaccination researchers.
“I was working in my office at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital when my daughter rang to say Jack Klemich was in intensive care,” she says, sharing how the shock affected her own family.
“That was such a terrible tragedy, that a beautiful 18-year-old boy we knew died within 24 hours of being infected, and he was playing football 48 hours before that.
“It is really heartbreaking.
“That was very inspiring for me to do what I can to make sure that doesn’t ever happen again.”
Professor Marshall was already running meningococcal vaccine trials at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide when she heard the news.
She now had new reason to achieve results that could help save lives.
She began further networking with other professionals in her role as Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Adelaide, and lobbying for more funding, all with the continuing support of the Klemich family.
As lead investigator for the “B Part of It” study conducted by the University of Adelaide, Professor Marshall delivered the largest meningococcal B vaccine herd immunity study in the world. It delivered the first real-world evidence of direct protection of meningococcal B vaccines in adolescents, who are at increased risk of developing meningococcal disease, or meningitis infection.
Meningitis B is caused by a group of bacteria known as group B neisseria meningitidis.
It can cause an infection of the membrane that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, and can also cause septicemia, a serious infection of the bloodstream.
It was Professor Marshall’s research that meant the state government in South Australia could announce in October 2018 that it would introduce the only meningococcal B vaccine program in the world for both infants and adolescents.
Since then, the government has announced this program will be funded indefinitely.
It was welcome news for Professor Marshall, who was now armed with evidence that the vaccines were working.
It came after she was also hearing of serious concerns about meningococcal from a pediatrician at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
“Two toddlers had died from meningococcal; two others had received amputations of the limbs – they had all four limbs removed. With meningococcal, there’s a 40 per cent chance of being left deaf or having amputations,” she says.
“It is so frustrating when you know it can be prevented by vaccines.”
FAMILY AFFAIR
Today, Professor Marshall is offering tea and cake baked by her daughter from the kitchen at her Beaumont home.
She is a warm and articulate speaker, and an interested listener.
She is thoughtful when she describes the grand old bluestone house, built in the 1850s and once owned by politician and wine-seller Sir William Milne. She talks about the home’s connections with humans and nature.
She and her husband David Misan, previously the medical director at Memorial Hospital, fell for the house and moved in 20 years ago.
There are traces of the 32ha of orchards and vineyards that once surrounded the home in the vast vegetable garden growing outside the kitchen window.
The garden was planted by her son Angus, a veterinarian investigating the way a virus like Covid can move from one species to another. He still drops in to ensure the garden is well tended.
Her elder daughter Siobhan is a pediatric trainee, while younger daughter Imogen is a teacher at Woodcroft College, studying a Master of Education in leadership.
It was Professor Marshall’s father who moved the family into the medical field, despite her parents, who immigrated to Australia during “The Troubles” in Ireland, being descended from six generations of farmers and five generations of bakers.
“I was asked to speak at a Women in Chemistry breakfast this week in my role as South Australian of the Year and I said: ‘don’t ever be limited by what you think are other people’s expectations or your background; there are no limits to what you can do’,” Professor Marshall says.
While she was influenced by her own mother and father, a nurse and GP respectively, and their love for their work and its benefits to people, Professor Marshall was unsure about her next move while she was still at school.
“I was thinking of health, thinking of speech pathology, maybe physiotherapy, and it was really the school counsellor who said, ‘you should always aim for the top of what you can do, why aren’t you thinking about medicine’?”
It was later when she was completing her medical training and took on an elective placement in a pediatric ward in Samoa that she thought about research.
The then-medical student had been given responsibility for entire wards. There were few resources, few treatments available and her father was sending medical textbooks to help with diagnosis and treatments.
It was a “lightbulb moment”, understanding the differences in health for children in Western Samoa, compared with children in Australia with their access to vaccines and treatments.
“You have so much impact if you work in public health, and I am very passionate about doing really good research,” she says.
Passion for research
While the rest of the world has spent two years talking about vaccines, Professor Marshall has remained at the cutting edge of research.
She has been awarded 18 research grants totalling more than $35m since 2004, and is the recipient of three National Health and Medical Research Council Fellowships.
During the pandemic she has provided advice about meningococcal B and Covid to the state’s health minister and the chief public health officer.
Prof Marshall is passionate about ensuring Australia, a wealthy country with so much access to treatments, supports other countries which are unable to obtain enough Covid vaccines.
She would like to see everyone in Australia vaccinated against Covid, and has been asked to meet personally with medical staff who are still unsure about receiving the jab.
As South Australian of the Year, Professor Marshall is happy to list her own heroes.
Both Jenny Couper, the head of Professor Marshall’s department at the University of Adelaide, and Sarah Robertson, the director of the Robinson Research Institute, are inspirational to her.
Professor Marshall believes the key to being successful is building partnerships.
She plans to build more of her own as she helps South Australia succeed in research. Some of her work is now directed to investigating the potential for the meningococcal vaccine to prevent the spread of gonorrhoea.
Professor Marshall is also working with the World Health Organisation to support further meningococcal protection globally.
It may be too late to save Jack Klemich, but the Professor’s vital work will continue to help protect tens of thousands of other young people from the deadly disease.
“She is this quiet achiever, she has done so much for others and is incredibly talented, incredibly humble and just an absolute delight. All of her colleagues are in awe of her,” Oren says.
“Jack should be 31 now. It’s been nearly 13 years and it’s still really hard; we miss Jack every day of our lives. I popped into Centennial Park and said hello to him just the other day.
“It doesn’t cure our grief by any means, but it’s just so nice that our gorgeous boy has perhaps provided some inspiration to help others to make sure they are safer, and others are spared the same fate as our gorgeous Jack.”
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