‘After seeing him, I just had to get a shot.’ What meningococcal disease can do to a body

For five months, Duane Rinde lost contact with a friend who lives in Texas.

No texts. No calls. No posts.

The silence ended when Rinde, 57, opened his texts to a picture of his friend. He lay in a hospital bed, hands and feet wrapped in white cloth. He was almost unrecognizable.

Rinde quickly learned that his friend was hospitalized after contracting meningococcal disease. And shortly after seeing the photo, he found out that his friend lost his hands and feet to the infection. He will need prosthetic limbs.

“After seeing him, I just had to get a shot,” he said.

Rinde, who lives in Broward County’s Oakland Park, began researching meningococcal disease — and discovered that Florida is experiencing an outbreak.

He rushed to a Walgreens and was told he could get vaccinated for $270. So he went back home, and his partner scheduled an appointment for the monkeypox and meningococcal disease vaccines at a Latinos Salud clinic in Wilton Manors where they billed the cost to his insurance.

“If you’re out at the bar, if you’re out anywhere, you can contract these diseases,” he said.

Health experts are alarmed by the meningococcal disease outbreak in Florida, which has primarily affected gay and bisexual men and has been much deadlier than monkeypox.

Twelve people have died among the 48 cases of meningococcal disease confirmed in Florida in 2022, said Dr. Ulyee Choe, statewide medical director for the Florida Department of Health at a Wednesday news briefing. No monkeypox deaths have been reported in the U.S.

“Meningococcal disease, to some degree, concerns me more given the severity of the disease,” Choe said.

Four meningococcal disease cases have been reported in Miami-Dade and two in Broward this year, Choe said. About half of the cases in Florida are among Hispanic men and people living with HIV, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most cases have been locally transmitted although some have involved people who have traveled to the state.

Meningitis can be easily transmitted and more likely to kill — and kill quickly, said Stephen Fallon, executive director of Latinos Salud. A person can go from infected to dead in two days.

“The newness of the monkeypox outbreak has displaced what is a more urgent focus on the meningitis epidemic in South Florida,” he said.

The clinic has alerted patients who call for monkeypox vaccine appointments about the risk of meningococcal disease, Fallon said. Despite the shortage in monkeypox vaccines, Latinos Salud has enough meningococcal disease, COVID-19 and hepatitis A and B vaccines for several weeks.

High-risk patients, including men who have sex with men and the immunocompromised, should immediately sign up to get a vaccine, said Jeremy Redfern, press secretary of the Florida Department of Health.

“We need to make sure that the public understands ... that meningococcal disease is a serious threat out of these two,” he said.