Mums on mission to stop deadly meningococcal disease
They met in boarding school and have been reunited in the most traumatic of circumstances, with their daughters struck down by an insidious disease.
QLD News
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UNITED by tragedy, these two Brisbane mums have joined forces in the fight against deadly meningococcal disease.
In heartbreaking similarity, their eldest daughters were both afflicted with the insidious infection, which strikes at random and can kill within hours.
Meningococcal survivor Phoebe O’Connell on her battle with illness
New funding hope for vaccine against killer meningococcal disease
Kirsten McGinty’s beloved Zoe, 20, whose “smile lit up the room”, died of the W strain in September 2017, while Katy O’Connell’s Phoebe, 18, lost her kidneys and spleen and has grim lifelong complications after contracting the Y strain last November.
Both girls were university students, fit and healthy, and immunised – but not against all five strains.
“These are the brutal realities of meningococcal”, said Ms McGinty, 49, of Clayfield.
“You need the quad-vaccine against A, C, W, Y and two jabs against B, or you are not protected, and young adults are particularly at risk because they study, work and socialise in close quarters.
“Not a day goes by when I don’t miss Zoe, and wish I could hold her hand and tell her how much I love her.”
Meningococcal bacteria is carried in the nasal passages – by up to 10 per cent of people, who don’t know they have it – and transferred by coughing, sneezing, kissing and other close contact.
It kills one in 10 victims – like Zoe, a QUT student who complained of feeling tired in the morning and died 16 hours later – and maims a further 30 per cent – like Phoebe, a University of Queensland student who very nearly also lost her nose, six fingers and six toes.
This week Ms McGinty met with Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg to push funding for the B vaccine, Bexsero, which costs $230-$500 per person (depending on age).
On July 29, she will fly to Canberra to lobby Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt to also expand funding of the ACWY vaccine to people up to age 24 – currently, only Year 10 students and 15-19-year-olds can get the $100 jab free in a program introduced in April.
Zoe McGinty and Phoebe O’Connell missed out, although their younger sisters were vaccinated.
Mrs O’Connell, 50, of Bulimba, said the physical, emotional and financial cost for survivors was enormous.
“Since Phoebe became sick on November 28, it’s cost the health system more than $320,000, and that excludes physio and medications.
“How many people could be vaccinated with that $320,000? Around 1000,” she said.
Mrs O’Connell, who in May donated one of her kidneys to Phoebe, is a former nurse who runs Link PRC, a company that teaches first aid.
She now includes information about meningococcal in every program she delivers, to workplaces and schools including Phoebe’s alma mater All Hallows’.
“The real question is how do we get young people, who are not yet sick, to visit a GP and get immunised? When I’m shopping I go up to people who look around Phoebe’s age and ask if they’re been fully vaccinated.
“They look at me a little bewildered, but then I show them a picture of my daughter in hospital, with all her extremities black from septicaemia, and they get it.”
When Mrs O’Connell and Ms McGinty met at a friend’s 50th birthday party this year, they realised they had something else in common – they boarded together at Stuartholme School in Toowong in the 1980s.
“If we can save even one person, and one family, then it’s worth every effort,” Mrs O’Connell said.
Since 2014 in Queensland, 262 people have contracted meningococcal, with infectious diseases experts warning of a looming epidemic.
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