The disease took the life of the 19-year-old Ballarat nursing/ paramedic student in May 2017. 

The documentary titled Devoted, created by Emma-Kate’s friend Steph Clifford and two other young film-makers Thomas Johns and Erica Lewis, has been viewed more than 28,000 times on the 4EK Facebook page.

The 4EK campaign was set up in 2017 to continue Emma-Kate’s legacy and to push meningococcal awareness. 

Watch the documentary below 

The documentary tells Emma-Kate’s story through emotional interviews with mother Abby McGrath and friends Jess Grant, Hannah Armstrong and Nathan Hucker. 

“I’d never heard of meningococcal y, I’d never heard of w. I’d only heard of c and b,” Ms McGrath said in the documentary. 

“All up it was 15 hours from the time she got sick to the time we lost her.

“She had diarrhea, it was in her blood and it was just shutting down every organ in her body... It just looked like the flu or a virus. There was nothing, no signs of typical meningococcal.

“It is more prominent in kids 15 to 19, but anyone can get it. No one knew about these vaccinations. If I had of known, I would have done it.”

READ MORE Helping to make sense of Emma-Kate’s ‘senseless’ passing

Film-maker Steph Clifford was in the same year as Emma-Kate at Loreto College. But it was after high-school when completing an alternative schoolies program in Cambodia that she formed a closer bond with Emma-Kate.

“We were a group of 20 girls all staying together in one room. Every morning Emma-Kate would be the person who would be up saying ‘right everyone, you have got to take your malaria tablets, lets go’,” Ms Clifford said. 

“She was such a leader of the group and was super funny, very sassy and super honest when she needed to be as well.

“We had many laughs in Cambodia. Sometimes there was nothing else to do but just sit down and talk or play cards and little things like that. I will cherish lots of those memories.”

Ms Clifford pitched the documentary tribute to Emma-Kate in her university film and television class at Deakin University in Melbourne, but the project soon became so much more than an assignment, for both her and fellow film students Thomas Johns and Erica Lewis. 

“We set out to make a tribute to Emma, but there is this other side to it as well that is the awareness for vaccinations and just to get the message out there as much as possible,” Mr Johns said. 

“If even one person or a couple of people could see it and be aware of the vaccinations they may not have known about before it has the potential to save a life. That was the main message we wanted to get across.”

“We showed this to our class in Melbourne and lots of people came up to me later asking and clarifying what she had, they had never really heard about it,” Ms Clifford said. 

“There are lots of people who don’t know what it is. Hopefully for those people who watch the documentary it starts a discussion about getting vaccinated and what the disease actually is. It could have been anyone. It was such an unfortunate incident but we can do something about it now.”

The release of the documentary comes at a fitting time. 

Health minister Greg Hunter announced the federal government will launch a new free national meningococcal vaccine program for 14 to 19-year-olds on Tuesday. 

The meningococcal A, C, W and Y vaccine will be added to the National Immunisation Program from April 2019 and be available to students aged 14 to 16 under a school based program. 

Adolescents aged 15 to 19-years-of-age, who have not already received the vaccine in school, will be able to receive the vaccine through an ongoing GP based catch up program.

Meningococcal is a rare but serious infection that occurs when meningococcal bacteria from the throat or nose invades the body.

There has been a rise in the number of meningococcal disease cases in Australia in recent years.

There were 382 cases reported nationally in 2017, compared with 252 cases in 2016 and 182 cases in 2015.

Deaths associated with meningococcal disease have also risen, with 28 deaths in 2017, compared with 11 deaths in 2016 and 12 deaths in 2015.

Since changes introduced on July 1, every 12-month-old in Australia is now offered a free ACWY meningococcal vaccine. 

In the past children were only vaccinated against meningococal c strain for free. 

Have you signed up to The Courier's variety of news emails? You can register below and make sure you are up to date with everything that's happening in Ballarat.