I AM writing following your item on the latest meningitis outbreak on the university campus (Student poorly after disease strikes campus, May 28) This is the second time in just a few months that you have carried such a story.

Both times the Bay Health Authority claims to have taken emergency steps to alert people to the dangers, including distributing information leaflets to all students and staff, but on neither occasion has this actually happened. My partner is a post-graduate student at the university, he also teaches part-time in two different departments. We have not received any information at all about the meningitis outbreak through any of these possible routes, although he did see a poster in the library.

This issue is of particular concern to us, as most of my partner's time on campus is spent in Furness College, where the outbreak apparently occurred and where our two-year old daughter has accompanied him several times over the last couple of weeks. I would be very interested to know whether this is a classic case of the health authority offering 'reassurance' through a public relations initiative rather than actually taking positive action, or whether the university authorities themselves have failed to distribute the information. Either way, We should all be extremely concerned essential information about a life-threatening disease is not getting through to those at risk.

Julie Cook,

Salisbury Road,

Lancaster.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.