Parents who want to protect their children from meningitis B, a deadly disease that mostly affects children below 5 years old, no longer have to worry about shelling out money for the immunization as Britain will soon make Bexsero, a new vaccine against the disease, available for free.
The National Health Service (NHS) had earlier been advised not to include the treatment in the routine child immunisation programme in the U.K for lack of evidence supporting its effectiveness but the Department of Health has apparently reversed the recommendation as it decided to make Bexsero, which was approved by the European Medicines Agency in 2012 and licensed by the European Commission early last year, to be made available for free on the NHS.
The agency is set to make the announcement on Friday and is also expected to give the reasons behind the re-appraisal. Sources close to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, however, said that the earlier recommendation by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) against adopting the treatment had been reversed following criticisms by scientists and physicians.
Nearly 200 leading medical researchers and doctors signed a public petition last month saying that the JCVI underestimated the meningitis and meningococcal disease, which they described as "a parent's greatest fear." The petition has likewise called for a speedy reappraisal of JCVI's recommendation of not including the treatment in government vaccinations.
As the vaccine is not currently available on NHS, parents pay to get their children vaccinated. Notably, around 85 percent of those who availed of the treatment through private sales came from some of the wealthiest regions in the U.K. The average cost of the treatment is around £300 for children between six months and two years but some charge upwards of £600 for the treatment.
In the U.S., a Drexel University student died March 10 from Meningitis B. Incidentally, the Bexsero, which helps prevent the disease, has not yet gotten its approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) so it is not yet available in the country. The treatment, however, is already used in Europe, Canada, and Australia.
