Two investigative teams from the Petaling district health department were dispatched within an hour of receiving news that a student had died of meningitis in the area a fortnight ago.

District health officer Dr Rushidi Ramly said the teams simultaneously visited the houses rented by Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) student D Thiyagarajan, who died of meningitis on June 29, and Loy Cheah Kee, who had shown symptoms of the infectious disease before he died two days earlier.

"Everything is under control. The Health Ministry and district health department had taken immediate and speedy action to determine the disease and contain it.

"We didn't put out an alert of an outbreak because there was no risk of the disease spreading. Otherwise, we would definitely have issued an alert through the media," Rushidi said when contacted today.

Housemates examined

Loy and Thiyagarajan, both 23, had shared their rented premises in Taman Bukit Serdang and Taman Balakong Jaya respectively with a number of fellow students.

Four students, including two of Loy's housemates, were admitted to the Kajang Hospital early last week for observation but were discharged a few days later.

"We immediately rushed to the two houses after Kajang Hospital tests confirmed that one of the two students had died of the disease," Rushidi told malaysiakini .

"We wanted to examine their housemates and those who had been in close contact with them."

Rushidi said Kajang and Putrajaya hospitals were alerted to treat patients with symptoms of meningitis, which include coughs, fever, severe headaches, nausea, stiff neck, vomiting and loss of consciousness.

Vomiting and loss of consciousness are signs of the advanced stage of infection, leading to death.

Health check

Following the two fatal cases, notices were posted at both the UPM agriculture and computer science faculties, urging the students to undergo screening. Thiyagarajan and Loy were studying at these two faculties.

However, Rushidi said that the disease was "isolated, sporadic occurrences and confined to the particular residences". "We have also given the boys' housemates health education on prevention and symptoms," he added.

"Mass vaccination was not recommended at that time because we didn't want to create an immune strain, especially when there are several strains of meningitis already in existence," said Rushidi.

Bad ventilation, congested living, stressful surroundings and low immunity were among the common features linked to the disease, he said.

"Don't share towels and handkerchiefs, and keep the windows open," he cautioned.

However, he added that the health ministry and district health department were still investigating the source of the disease, especially when both cases were totally unrelated.

The postmortem on Thiyagarajan confirmed that he had died of meningitis, an extremely dangerous and contagious bacterial infection which causes inflammation of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord.

Loy's body was however released for burial before the cause of death could be determined.

Not common

Meanwhile, a microbiologist from a local university said meningitis was not common in Malaysia compared with countries such as the US, which has about 400 cases annually and mortality rate of 10 percent.

Requesting anonymity, she said since the number of cases were small, local medical practitioners were not too familiar with the diagnosis of meningitis, which is more associated with Haj pilgrims.

"The first thing a doctor treating such symptoms would probably think of is dengue. But if there are skin lesions or slightly bleeding rashes, then he or she would think of the possibility of a meningitis infection," she said, adding that it was difficult to detect in very young children.

However, local medical undergraduates and practitioners are now being trained to detect meningitis at the early stages, she added.

The medical expert also said meningitis cases are usually rampant in the sub-Saharan zone, such as in African and Arab countries.

"Maybe the Health Ministry should conduct full screening, if there isn't one already in place, on all foreign students who are planning to live in Malaysia for a few years," she suggested.

In fact, she said Malaysians would be very susceptible to this disease due to the naturally low occurrence of it, but added that they too can be "healthy carriers".