We are students at Kent and Medway Medical School (KMMS), a school within the University of Kent, and we are calling on our institution to immediately move upcoming in-person exams online, or postpone them, in response to the serious meningococcal disease outbreak currently affecting the Canterbury area.

Since 13 March 2026, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has confirmed 13 cases of invasive meningococcal disease, including two tragic deaths, a University of Kent student and a sixth-form pupil at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Faversham. Several others remain seriously ill in hospital. The UKHSA has been contacting over 30,000 students, staff and their families across the Canterbury area, and is distributing preventative antibiotics to those identified as close contacts or at risk.

In direct response to this public health crisis, the University of Kent has already cancelled all in-person assessments this week for its students. Yet today, KMMS sent an email confirming that "the intention is that all assessments will currently go ahead as planned: this includes those next week for Years 1, 2 and 5." As a school operating on the same University of Kent campus in Canterbury, KMMS students are equally exposed to this outbreak, and are being asked to sit 3-hour-long exams in enclosed PC rooms at precisely the moment public health authorities are urging caution and limiting close-contact settings.

This decision places KMMS students in an impossible position: attend in-person exams and risk exposure during an active outbreak, or protect their health and face academic consequences. No student should be forced to make that choice.

The irony is not lost on us that, as future healthcare professionals, we are being asked to disregard the very public health principles we are trained to uphold. Meningococcal disease can progress rapidly, from early symptoms to life-threatening illness within hours. Gathering large numbers of students together to sit 3-hour-long exams in enclosed PC rooms during this outbreak is an unnecessary and avoidable risk.

We are not asking for exams to be cancelled. We are asking for a reasonable, temporary adjustment, one already given to other students from the same university, to protect student health and ensure academic fairness during an unprecedented local emergency.

We urge KMMS to act now. Please sign this petition to demand that KMMS move Year 1, 2, and 5 exams online or postpone them until the outbreak is under control.