Mumps in the night

Public health clinic offers students free catch-up shots

By Lucas Timmons

timm0051@algonquincollege.com

A free Ottawa Public Health mumps vaccine clinic inoculated over 200 Algonquin students and staff on Jan. 13 and 14.

The clinic is part of a 3-month provincially-funded campaign to vaccinate people considered high-risk for catching and spreading the highly contagious virus.

Students, especially those in residence, are at a higher risk of contracting mumps because of their proximity to peers and the tenacity of the virus.

Mumps is spread through direct contact with saliva, or through coughing and sneezing and can survive on surfaces outside the body long enough for a host to be found.

"People don't take it as seriously as before," says public health nurse Kyla Cullain. "We thought we had it eradicated, but now we see that it's back, so that's why we have this catch-up program, so everyone has two doses."

Annie Roussel, the coordinator for the program in Ottawa, said the second shot is 95 per cent effective in preventing mumps.

"Many college students were only given one shot as an infant," Roussel said. "Before 1996, only one dose was given to children born in Ontario. That first dose is only 80 per cent effective."

Ottawa Public Health hung posters all over campus advertising the clinic, and hired two marketing representatives to spread the word from class to class. Students were receptive to the free clinic and said the posters, showing a mumps sufferer with a severely swollen face were effective.

"I am a nursing student and next week I am going into consolidation,” said Torill Thomas. “I figured I might as well get the vaccination while I am here and it's free. A girl in our class is connected with the program so she told us all about it."

Ontario has had an average of 15 cases of mumps reported each year since 2001 with a high of 28 cases in 2007, which were linked to an outbreak in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Mumps causes painful swelling of the salivary glands in 95 per cent of patients with symptoms and is usually accompanied by fever and headache. Mumps can also cause meningitis (inflammation of the brain and spinal cord), orchitis (swelling of one or both testicles), oophoritis (swelling of the ovaries), mastitis (swelling of the breasts), pancreatitis, and deafness (may be permanent). Spontaneous abortion can occur if infection happens in the first trimester of pregnancy.

For others, the warnings of possible symptoms was reason enough for the shot. "I don't want to go impotent for life, or sterile," said vaccine recipient Mike Gore.