Patients, Patients
For one day this spring, the health center at Colby looked like the emergency room of a metropolitan hospital on a busy Saturday night. Students were lying on couches, on cots, on the floor, in the hallway, on every flat surface that would accommodate a human body. This was not a drill to test the proficiency of health center staff. It was an honest-to-goodness epidemic of what students were calling "the Colby virus."
A particularly virulent strain of gastroenteritis hammered the campus for about two weeks in late April and early May, according to Medical Director Melanie Thompson. The peak of the epidemic occurred on April 25, when the health center treated 65 students. "We were so busy we actually had our nurses doing triage," she said. "It was the worst [epidemic] I've seen at Colby."
News of the highly infectious illness--characterized by acute nausea and vomiting--created so much anxiety that students were bringing their roommates to the infirmary and insisting they stay there. "We were so full that our nurses tried to persuade them to just go back to their rooms after being treated, but the roommates refused," Thompson said.
Properly treated, gastroenteritis is not a life-threatening illness, although it is a major cause of death among young children in developing countries, Thompson says. "A few of the students we saw were dehydrated enough that we put them on IVs and sent some to the hospital. But most of them were feeling okay after twenty-four hours," she said.
Thompson says the epidemic probably was caused by a combination of a strong virus, inattentive hygiene and close living quarters. "Routine hand washing is the best defense against gastroenteritis," she said. "Students are especially vulnerable because they get run down from lack of sleep and other factors and their immune systems are lowered."
The virus had virtually disappeared by mid-May and did not significantly affect end-of-the-year activities.