Family in campaign for vital vaccine

Family in campaign for vital vaccine

6 March 2013

THE parents of a Newcastle boy who survived meningitis are urging the Government to make a new vaccine against Meningitis B — one of the deadliest forms of the disease — available to all children.

Fionn Denvir was just four years old when he fell into a coma after he was struck by the disease in February 2009. Against the odds he pulled through, but it took him 18 months to make a full recovery.

Now aged eight, Fionn’s parents Rita and Neal are uniting with other families whose lives have been affected by meningitis to support Meningitis UK’s new Meningitis B: Beat It Now campaign.

The Newcastle family believes that the drug Bexsero — which is the first Meningitis B vaccine licensed for use in the UK — could save thousands of lives, especially among the under fives who are most at risk.

Rita and Neal were frightened and shocked at how the disease had affected their son, explaining a vaccine would have prevented him from becoming so ill.

They say meningitis is not uncommon and in their quest to have the meningitis vaccine widely available on the NHS they have secured the support of South Down MP Margaret Ritchie who raised the issue at Westminster last week.

Currently, parents whose children are under five have to pay for the meningitis vaccine to be administered. The Denvir’s insist the vaccine needs to be included in the NHS’s routine child immunisation scheduled.

Mrs. Denvir said having the vaccine available to young children was “incredibly important” and thanked Miss Ritchie for her support.

“The whole experience of Fionn having meningitis has changed our lives and affected our entire extended family,” she explained.

“If having the vaccine available on the NHS can prevent one family from having to go through what we went through, that will be a good thing.

“We are very lucky because we had a good outcome, but other families are not so lucky. Even though we had a good outcome, we experienced a very traumatic event which affected us as a family quite a lot.”

Mrs. Denvir says the vaccine can make a huge difference to children and their families and hopes it won’t be long before it’s widely available on the NHS.

She added: “Our main aim is to prevent other families from having to experience what we did with Fionn. This vaccine can make a huge difference to family life.”

Meningitis B, the most common form of the disease in the UK, affects around 1,870 people each year and every week six people, many of them children, die of the disease. One in three also suffers life-changing after-effects such as limb loss or brain damage.