Meningitis B Vaccine
Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown(8 years ago)
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Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My hon. Friend is right. I pay tribute to the charity based in his constituency and to the other meningitis charity, because they have been campaigning for many years on meningitis B and all the other strains.
The point about rolling out the vaccine to the cohorts—I urge the Minister to go further than that—is that my understanding is that once someone is vaccinated for meningitis B with Bexsero, they are covered for life. Therefore, if more cohorts are covered by the roll-out, more of the population will be covered and the entire population will become less susceptible.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
My question follows on nicely from the point made by the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) in his intervention about the long-term costs. I first came across this issue at a reception held by Meningitis Now. I commend that charity and the Meningitis Research Foundation for their excellent work. In terms of special educational needs, long-term costs can come in when a child reaches 12 or 13 and it becomes apparent that they are not developing at the same rate as other children. All sorts of educational implications should be factored into the long-term costs.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I could not agree more. That is why the CEMIPP group study should look at not only the medical costs but the educational costs, the cost of carers and so on. There are considerable costs to the public purse. We tend, under our democratic system, to be quite short-termist in our view of such matters. I am involved at the moment in work on drugs for cystic fibrosis, to which exactly the same issues apply. After the considerable cost at the outset, there is a lifelong benefit to babies from getting such drugs. If we are going to carry out a cost-benefit analysis for the meningitisusb B vaccination, that is what we should consider.