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Two young people are dead and 20 are receiving treatment after a meningitis outbreak at the University of Kent. The students caught up in it belong to a generation that has never been routinely vaccinated against the strain responsible.
doesn't exist. It does. Bexsero, which protects against meningococcal group B disease , has beenEvery student at university today was born before July 2015, meaning every one of them missed the cut-off. The NHS never offered them the jab, and no catch-up programme was ever provided. A decade of students has passed through higher education with no routine protection against the The decision not to extend the programme beyond infants reflects a genuine tension at the heart of vaccine policy. The government's advisory body, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation With many vaccines, the benefit extends beyond the person vaccinated. Vaccinate enough people, and the disease runs out of hosts, protecting even those who never received the jab – this is known as herd immunity.Vaccinating a baby stops that baby getting ill; it does nothing to stop the bacteria circulating in the wider population. With no such ripple effect to factor in, the JCVI judged the benefit too narrow to justify extending the programme.Meningococcal bacteria spread through close contact: kissing, sharing drinks, coughing in crowded spaces. Universities, with their halls of residence, freshers' weeks and nightclubs, are among the most efficient environments imaginable for transmission.tracking students during their first week at a UK university found that the proportion carrying the bacteria in their throats jumped from less than 7% on day one to over 23% by day four. By December of that year, in catered halls, the figure had reached 34%.found that first-year undergraduate students face a risk of meningococcal B disease almost 12 times higher than their non-student peers of the same age. Living in halls of residence amplified that risk further still.. The question that the tragic events in Kent force policymakers to consider is whether that increased risk was adequately factored into the original decision. Parents who wanted to protect their children privately could. Many of them did. A full course of Bexsero requires two doses for anyone over the age of 11. At most UK pharmacies, each dose costs around £110, making the full courseat the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine put it, the availability of private vaccination creates a situation where access depends on ability to pay. That inequality is now playing out in real time.their normal level. The families rushing to book appointments are inevitably those who can afford to. Those who cannot are left hoping the outbreak does not reach their child.Vaccine policy is genuinely difficult. Every decision involves trade-offs, and the resources available to public health are not unlimited. But the economic case for keeping the programme infant-only has grown shakier since 2015.published in the journal Value in Health in 2021 found that when a fuller picture of the disease's burden is included , the cost per year of healthy life gained falls below the NHS's standard threshold for approving treatments. The short-term savings from not vaccinating teenagers may be generating long-term costs that the original calculation never captured. There is also the cost of the outbreak itself. More than 30,000 people in the Canterbury area have been contacted by health authorities. A targeted vaccination campaign has been launched for students in halls of residence. Emergency responses to outbreaks are not without cost, and they cannot undo the harm already done.this week that he would ask the JCVI to re-examine eligibility for meningitis vaccines in light of the outbreak. That review is welcome, and overdue. The first cohort of babies vaccinated in 2015 will not reach university age until 2033. Until then, the students arriving at freshers' week each autumn will do so without routine protection. Unless policy changes.
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