The Meningococcal Season
Friday 4th of October 2013 | Category: Opinion | Written by: Leoarna MathiasI’ve written before about how social media keeps me more than up to date with what is going on in the parenting universe, and provides me with ample material for the purposes of my regular posts here. It is usually to twitter that I turn for inspiration, but just a few weeks ago, a longstanding chum of mine (who shall remain anonymous for his own sake), who works in the pharmaceutical industry, updated his status with an interesting piece from a city banking magazine. Now, you’d be right in thinking that I don’t usually go looking to the square mile to give me stories, but in this case, the piece was entirely relevant to our audience here at Babies.co.uk. In essence, it examined the decision by a government advisory body not to give the green light to a Meningitis B vaccination drug that has been twenty years in the research and development phase.
Why Turn it Down?
For the author of the piece there were many objectionable elements to the decision by the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to not, ‘at any price’ allow the new drug, known presently as Bexsero, to be made available on the NHS. This, despite the fact that the drug has been proven effective in large scale studies. Meningitis kills more children under five than any other infectious disease in the UK, and for those that do not die, many are left with long term disabilities. In 1999 a Meningitis C vaccination was introduced and has had a remarkably positive impact on the number of cases that occur in this country each year. The Meningitis Research Foundation argues on its own website that the government will be failing thousands of families if it does not reverse this decision. And beyond these very valid human interest and public health reasons, the failure of the JCVI decision has potentially far reaching ramifications for the future of medical research in the UK. He writes,
“The UK has a tremendous legacy in health care; its vaccine approvals in the past have been forward-looking, making it a world leader in the field. Indeed, the JCVI has done some good work in the past. In this instance, however, the bean counters have chosen to examine a grain of sand while ignoring the beach, particularly over the economics.”
Preventing Further Advances?
Our pharmaceutical industry cannot carry on conducting expensive research for the benefit of mankind without due regard to its commercial considerations. If large scale studies with such concrete results such as this one don’t lead to a ‘yes’ from the licencers, then the companies will simply have no choice but to stop looking for new cures and vaccinations. Now I know that there are lots of complex layers to the ethics of pharmacological research, but in essence, it is hard to see why the JCVI has taken this stance against a drug that will so clearly benefit large sections of the community. And as my research took me further into the story, I discovered that the JCVI was meeting again on the 2nd of October to revisit their decision. As yet I have not been able to uncover the outcome of their meeting – but I will keep you posted. In the meantime, you can read more about the story here on the BBC website, and by coincidence, I happened upon this tweet today, from, I’m guessing, someone who works in the health professions, who said she’d dealt with three cases of meningitis already by lunchtime, and thus it was clearly ‘meningococcal season’. She also posted a useful infographic, which we repeat here for your benefit, and we encourage you to make sure you take up the full range of immunisations your child is offered, including Meningitis C, which does of course, afford them a good level of protection from that particular strain of the disease.
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