Fobbed off, parents who fear meningitis
PARENTS who suspect their child has meningitis must be pushier with doctors who try to fob them off as a ‘Calpol case’, MPs heard yesterday.
Tory Helen Whately, whose constituents Neil and Jenny Burdett lost their two-year-old daughter Faye to the disease in February, urged mothers and fathers to stand firm.
She told a Westminster debate: ‘Parents need to trust their instincts if a child seems unusually ill, and it’s also absolutely critical for health professionals to listen to them.’
Alongside the tell-tale meningitis rash – which is often only spotted too late to stop the disease worsening – parents must look out for other warning signs, the MP and mother of three said.
She added: ‘Parents have to be ready to spot a whole host of other symptoms and to be really confident when they speak to doctors that they think their child is really more sick than usual, this doesn’t feel like just a Cal- pol case. Parents, I do believe, have an instinct over this but we need to encourage them to trust their instinct and for health professionals to encourage parents to speak about that.’
The Burdetts, who attended the debate, shared their harrowing story in yesterday’s Daily Mail. The couple, from Maidstone, Kent, are urging the Government to fund a vaccination programme for older children for meningitis B – the strain which claimed their daughter’s life.
The jab is currently offered to babies aged two to five months on the NHS, while a one- off catch up programme extended it to all those under one year for a limited time.
GlaxoSmithKline, which produces the vaccine, made profits of £10.3billion last year. MPs called on the pharmaceutical giant to lower its prices to make the jab more accessible.
Tory MP David Nuttall, who represents Bury North, said the Government should divert funding from adults’ stop smoking services to pay for it. He added: ‘If they have not stopped [smoking] by now, when will they? These adults have a choice.’
Ben Howlett, the Tory MP for Bath, spoke of an 11-month-old girl in his constituency, Harmonie-Rose Allen, who lost both arms and legs after contracting meningitis B. He called for an immediate catch-up vaccination programme for all under-fives.
David Winnick, the Labour MP for Walsall North, shared the story of seven-year-old Mason Timmins who died from the illness. He said Mason’s parents had paid to inoculate their three-year-old daughter privately.
Health minister Jane Ellison said more research was needed on the efficacy of the jab. But she promised to fund trials in teenagers as well as a wider awareness campaign.