Meningitus B: Does the government think this is an acceptable response to 800k signatures on a petition?

[MythologicalPersonage]

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/108072?reveal_response=yes

Please read my link below if you have time.
A child who survives menb costs the NHS an infinite amount of money
Prosthetic limbs don't come cheap.

Sugar21 I am so sorry you've had to cope with the death of your child to Meningitis B.

The cost to the NHS is already huge. 646,000 births each year. £75 per dose. The cost for vaccinating each cohort is £48.5 million pounds.

There are 11,690,000 under 16s in the UK. To vaccinate them all would cost £876,750,000. Do you honestly think that we should be allocating over eight hundred and seventy-five million pounds to Meningitis B alone??

That's just 1 dose isn't it lougle? 2-3-4 doses are recommended depending on the age of the child. Also, studies have shown that protection wanes after ~ 2.5-3 years so extra doses would be needed to maintain coverage. You also need to take effectiveness of the vaccine into consideration.

www.fiercevaccines.com/story/gsk-finally-seals-uk-bexsero-deal-20-dose/2015-03-30

I think the response is satisfactory-they can't afford it. Also though,is there not evidence that wiping out carriage of certain serotypes that cause meningitis now, you increase carriage of other serotypes and there is now an increase in meningitis caused by bacterial serotypes we don't have a vaccine for?

We all carry the bacteria that can cause meningitis in our nose and throats at times, why does it cause invasive disease in some and not others? Is there a way to better target vaccines to those most at risk without increasing the invasivness of bacteria that at present dont cause much harm?

Sugar I'm very sorry for your loss.
However the nhs is of course a finite resource and if a wider vaccination programme was funded, it would of course take money away from another area of the nhs which would affect a whole other group of people and likely cause deaths elsewhere.

www.meningitis.org/ctc

I think that question hits the nail on the head techno. We know very little about carriage and why the bacterium becomes invasive in rare cases. These are all open questions.

Yes. I've just looked it up. 2 to 3 doses dependent on age. So if we take 1.8m children from 0-2, who would need 3 doses, with the remaining 9.8m children only needing 2 doses, that comes to a neat 25,000,000 doses needed, costing £1,875,000,000. Almost 2 billion pounds.

Thank you for the link Sugar. I wonder how the cost effectiveness figures have been reached and whether they include the medical, educational and social costs to the state associated with the treatment and rehabilitation for survivors of meningitis.

I agree with 1234Littleham that it is very odd for the government to respond to the most popular petition in parliamentary history before it has even been debated in the House of Commons.

Quite. Just a tad insensitive too given the nature of the petition.

Ah well lets fund another space programme for India

The NHS have negotiated a special deal to get the vaccine. Each Bexsero dose costs £25 (not £75) to procure. So lougle your calculations are incorrect.

Actually I think it might be £20 a dose.

Based on lougle's figures, at £20 per dose the cost would be £500,000,000.

That's not including extra 'booster' doses that may be needed to keep younger children immune right through to their teens.

I suggest Parents who want their children vaccinated could and would pay £20. Many Parents have paid an awful lot more to safeguard their little ones privately .
If my dd were still with us I would forego a few nights out to save her life

All of this should have been debated properly with the pros and cons set out before the committee. For all we know there is a good compromise position which would move Meningitis research forward.

You can read how the JCVI came to their decision here

This is their interim statement so you can see that they changed their original position for

Yes I read it

Statement from Meningitis Now:

"We recognise and welcome the actions taken by Government in September 2015 to introduce the Men B vaccine to babies under the age of one, which they clarified in their statement responding to the petition.

We also understand the need for data to be gathered on aspects such as efficacy and duration of protection with this new vaccine and that further research is required to understand whether immunisation of adolescents will lead to herd protection.

Our issue, as a charity representing people affected, is that we are now two years on since the JCVI recommended this study and, whilst we are pleased to read in the Government statement that there is Preparatory research that has been commissioned and is underway, we still have no indication of when the full study will commence or be completed by. We therefore continue to call for the under 5s to be protected while we wait for the data to be gathered and because of the length of time it is taking to progress the study.

We keenly await information about the process of MPs speaking to families and health experts, prior to a debate in Parliament and will ensure that we continue to be the voice for people affected by this devastating disease".

There are other people on the thread who may not have read it.

Mythological I recieved that this morning via email as an involved family. It's very interesting

Meningitis Now sound less than impressed with this process.

Even at £20 per dose, do you think it is proportionate to spend £500 million to prevent 12 deaths and 12 major disabilities (official figures suggest that 1in 10 people who contract MenB and survive will have major disability) per year?

I would love for the NHS to have limitless funds, but it doesn't. This doesn't represent cost effectiveness.

Even still, the vaccine is only 73% effective.