A student at Petree Elementary School died yesterday from bacterial meningitis, officials said.
Crystal Robinson died yesterday at the hospital, said Bonnie Davis, a spokeswoman at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
Crystal was being treated in the pediatric intensive-care unit.
Theo Helm, a spokesman for Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, said that Crystal was a fifth-grader.
Helm said he couldn't give her age because of the school system's privacy policy.
Meningitis typically involves an inflammation of the tissues or fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
Crystal became sick on Thursday, said Dr. Tim Monroe, the health director for Forsyth County. She attended school on Thursday and became sick afterward, Helm said.
The health department said it is trying to contact the parents of students in Crystal's classroom, including making home visits to those who did not have a phone number listed.
"There is no identifiable risk for children in her classroom or in the school," Monroe said. The only people who would be considered at risk would be family members and someone, such as a best friend, who had spent hours with Crystal as she became ill, he said.
Meningitis can be caused by either a virus or bacteria.
Meningitis typically is caught by being in close contact with other people, such as eating and drinking after someone else, coughing into someone's face, or a person touching their nose, touching an object and then someone else touching the object and then their nose.
The early symptoms of meningitis are similar to the flu -- muscle aches, fever and headache. Signs of a serious case of meningitis typically include tiny bruises that start to appear on the skin.
"We're telling parents to be alert for the symptoms, and if they should arise, to seek immediate medical care," said Linda Means, the communicable-disease nursing supervisor for the health department.
Means said that the form of meningitis that Crystal contracted isn't clear.
"We don't expect a final diagnosis until Saturday at the earliest," she said.
Meningococcal meningitis is the more frightening form of bacterial meningitis because it can kill quickly and it can be more easily passed on to others.
Pneumococcal meningitis is more likely to cause brain damage. Babies are more at risk for pneumococcal meningitis, but the elderly are more at risk to die from it.
According to studies, a range of from 5 percent to 15 percent of people walk around with meningococcal bacteria in their nose.
Vaccines protect against some forms of meningitis but not against others.
Helm said that the school system would have crisis counselors available at the school Monday.
rcraver@wsjournal.com | 727-7376
About the disease
• Meningitis can be caused by either a virus or a bacterium.
• Bacterial meningitis can cause hearing loss, learning disability or brain damage. Two types of bacteria -- meningococcus and pneumococcus -- are the leading causes of bacterial meningitis.
For more information about meningitis, go to www.cdc.gov/meningitis/about/faq.html.
Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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