Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on securing this important debate.

I wish to change the subject and address meningitis B. A vaccine is available, and the Minister and the Department have decided that it is not cost-effective. I wonder what costs they have taken into account. Was it the lifelong costs of looking after a child such as my constituent Isabelle, who contracted meningitis B when she was seven years old? Isabelle was given a 0.7% chance of survival. She survived, but she had to have both her arms and both her legs amputated. She is the most amazing little girl. She is so bubbly, so bright and so cheerful given what she has to deal with, but there is the cost to the NHS, the cost of education and the cost of continuing care for the rest of her life—she is now 10 years old. She has to have four sets of legs and two sets of arms, which change regularly and cost thousands of pounds each. She has to have two wheelchairs, one portable and one mechanical, because she cannot walk far.

Isabelle has to have continuing care in school. Someone has to sit with her in classes because, clearly, there are things that she cannot do. She cannot easily carry her books from class to class, for instance, and she will need such care not just for the rest of her school and university life but for the rest of her working life, because she will be limited in what she is able to do.

Isabelle is the most amazing child that I have ever come across. She has come through such terrible circumstances. Her family had to make the awful decision that both her legs and both her arms had to be amputated. No parent should have to make that decision, and no child should have to live with that consequence for the rest of their life. She is not the only such child in this country; there are a lot of children in that situation with varying degrees of disability.

When the Minister reconsiders universal vaccination, will she bear it in mind that, although it is expensive, the emotional costs of what Isabelle’s family went through outweigh that expense? The Minister should consider the matter in the round, not just the cost to the NHS of vaccinating every child. We should consider what vaccination is doing for the whole country in saving money and preventing parents from having to make such a terrible decision. It must have been agony for the parents, the child and the family to survive in that situation. Will the Minister reconsider what can be done to ensure universal vaccination against meningitis B?