THE MENINGITIS VACCINE PANIC
Parents’ fears over killer bug sparks shortage of life-saving jabs
CLINICS in Scotland had last night run out of the meningitis B vaccine after being flooded with calls from frantic parents. Demand for the jab to protect against the killer brain bug has spiked since Wednesday, when a heartbroken mother released images of her two-year-old daughter, Faye Burdett, dying from meningitis.
Scottish campaigners are calling for the vaccine to be available on the NHS to all children after it was rolled out only for babies younger than a year old last year.
Some private clinics have taken almost 100 calls each in 36 hours from parents willing to pay almost £400 to have their children vaccinated privately.
One, based in Perth and Fife, last night had 250 children on its waiting list, almost all added in the last couple of days.
These desperate families will have to wait until June for the vaccine due to a global shortage.
Only one manufacturer, GSK, makes the vaccine and it has told clinics that they are only now allowed it for children who have already been partially vaccinated and need follow-up jabs. As the crisis builds, there is
growing pressure on the Scottish Government to overrule the UK-wide age limit for the vaccine, so children older than one can be protected – particularly those under five, who are most at risk from meningitis B.
Parents who lost children never given the chance to be vaccinated are at the forefront of the fight for the jab to be rolled out.
In the last 1 years alone in Scotland, 49 people have died of meningitis B – more than a quarter of these children above the current vaccination age.
Ashley Smith, whose 11-month-old daughter Maddison died three years ago, said: ‘My daughter went from appearing to have a cold to being dead the next morning. I want all children to be given this vaccine.’
The threat of meningitis B was highlighted by the heartbreaking photographs of Faye Burdett, whose mother, Jenny, has called for all children up to the age of 11 to be vaccinated against the condition.
The photos left worried parents doing everything they can to get a vaccine for their children – which, for those older than one, means getting it done privately.
Derek Ramsay, owner of JDR Healthcare, which runs two private clinics in Perth and Fife charging £9 for a dose of the vaccine Bexsero, said: ‘The demand has gone crazy this week because of meningitis B – from about 1 calls a day, I had 60 to 70 by 3pm.’
The crisis is believed to have come about because drugs giant GSK failed to anticipate the private demand from parents.
The Scottish Government said there are enough stocks of Bexsero for children of NHS vaccination age to get their first jab at two months old and two follow-ups before their first birthday.
But while the NHS stock has been ringfenced, private stocks are under extreme pressure. CityDocs, which has clinics in Edin- burgh, Glasgow and Stirling, said its UK-wide company was receiving ten times the usual number of calls due to the ‘Bexsero effect’.
The Scottish Government has not committed to rolling out the vaccine to older children, as demanded by a petition submitted to the Westminster Government, which last night had more than 00,000 signatures.
But Public Health Minister Maureen Watt said she would write to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to ask it to consider reviewing the evidence on their current advice over the vaccine.
She said: ‘When any new immunisation programme is introduced, there has to be a date to determine eligibility – a decision based on the best independent clinical recommendation to ensure we can protect those children most at risk of MenB.’
A GSK spokesman said: ‘Due to unexpected global demand for Bexsero during 201 , we are experiencing supply constraints during the first half of this year.’ The company said it hopes to improve supply from the summer.
‘The demand has gone crazy’