Meningitis is still causing people to be ‘wheeled out of the campus multiple times a day, every other day’.

Photo Credit: Ed Us on Unsplash

Students of colour at the University of Kent are “horrified” by the ongoing Meningitis outbreak in Canterbury and feel under-diagnosed.

Denishaé Duffus and Blien Daniels are two students who have both been vaccinated, choosing to do so as soon as the outbreak started.

Both Daniels and Duffus are black women who live near the main camps of the University of Kent and received varying levels of support when it came to meningitis.

 “I started hearing this person died, that person had died, including someone was kind of connected to me, I did not personally know them, but it just felt very scary,” Daniels said.

Duffus is a 2^nd year student who is type 1 diabetic, therefore there were certain accommodations she feels as though the university and A&E failed to provide her with.

While Daniels Isn't living with a chronic illness she still lives in fear and paranoia due to the handling of meningitis by her university.

Duffus said: “I do have a weaker immune system, so there was quite a lot of fear for me, getting diagnosed with diabetes was already a traumatising medical experience for me.”

Both women describe getting vaccines they did with no hesitation.

In Denishaé’s case, she faced almost waiting up to five hours receive a vaccine, something that many people in Canterbury are facing, however she believes subconscious racial biases played a part in her dismissal.

“I felt as though because I wasn’t showing the most obvious symptoms, I was quickly dismissed and given how long wait times for a vaccine are in Canterbury, I went home to get vaccinated as soon as possible,” Duffus said.

A recent survey of 20 young adults showed that of those who attend a university in Kent or know somebody who does, it takes “noticeably more effort” to find symptoms that accurately represent themselves—for example, finding rashes on darker skin.

However, Daniels personally didn’t take her race or ethnicity into account.

Daniels said: “I’m going to be honest, I don’t think that was my main concern—I was just thinking every symptom I felt was meningitis, but I don’t think I ever correlated anything with my race or ethnicity.”

Daniels and Duffus both share the opinion thought the University of Kent handled the situation very poorly.

It took the national announcement of meningitis in Canterbury for the university to act according to them, but both were made aware of the situation by friends, Duffus was woken up by a frantic call from a friend, urging her to stay at home because of the illness and Daniels Found out when she was on her way to the library on campus.

“I was really scared because I know some people who had gone to Club Chemistry, the nightclub where the outbreak started, and you know I could have shared food with them or whatever because I was close with them,” Daniels said.

When asked to clarify on the university’s actions—or lack thereof—both described the sporadic emails.

Duffus said: “Meningitis is fatal, there should have be serious conversations on how outbreaks are handled by the university, we should’ve learned much more from the covid outbreak.”