Meningococcal Infections—Fort Ord and California

John W Brown; Philip K Condit

Abstract

Meningococcal meningitis began to occur in outbreak proportions during 1962 at Fort Ord, Monterey County. This increase in incidence continued until basic training was stopped at that post late in 1964. Most of the cases were among basic trainees in the first eight weeks of training, although other personnel had close contacts with trainees.

All of the meningococci isolated were serotype B and about 50 per cent of the military patients with meningitis had sulfadiazine resistant strains. At this time, approximately 20 per cent of the civilian male population of military age are carriers of the organism before going into service. By eight weeks of training nearly 90 per cent of the men in some barracks carried the organism. Yet there was no correlation between the carrier rate and the occurrence of cases between barracks.

A feature of this outbreak was that a high proportion of healthy males (20 per cent) were carriers of type B meningococci. This finding reflects the carrier rate in the general civilian population of the same age. The organism is apparently so widely disseminated throughout the population that it is impossible to decide with certainty the source of the organism infecting any particular person. It is unlikely that military groups pose extraordinary hazard to civilians. During 1964, only one case of meningococcal meningitis was found among the civilians of Monterey County while there were 89 in military personnel and 10 among the civilian dependents of military personnel.

At present there is an increasing rate of meningococcal meningitis among the total population of California, suggesting that this area is on the upward swing in the cyclical occurrence of the disease.