Starting in September, all babies in the UK will be offered vaccinations against meningitis B. That will make the UK the first country in the world to have a nationwide vaccine programme for the disease.
Meningitis B, caused by the “B” strain of the Neisseria meningitides bacterium, accounts for 60 to 80 per cent of all the UK’s meningitis cases. On average , of which a tenth prove fatal. Another tenth result in serious impairments such as amputations, deafness, bone deformities and brain damage.
Vaccines are already available for other less common forms of the disease, such as meningitis C. “The meningitis C vaccine has been fantastic, and cases have dwindled away to just a handful since it was introduced in 1999,” says Linda Glennie of the charity in Bristol, UK, who hopes the same will now happen with meningitis B.
Undisclosed deal
Sold as , the vaccine will be made available through a deal announced last week between the UK Department of Health and the pharmaceutical company . A company spokesman said that details will not be disclosed to avoid compromising potential deals with other countries.
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from its developer, Novartis, when it bought its vaccine research arm for $5.25 billion. In return, GSK sold its oncology assets to Novartis for $16 billion.
Bexsero was . It has previously been used following meningitis outbreaks at universities, including one at Princeton in 2013, during which 17,000 students received it.
Progress against meningitis is also accelerating in Africa, where meningitis A is the dominant form of the disease, affecting around 20 countries in a belt stretching from east to west across central Africa. Since 2010, 153 million Africans have received a vaccine against it called .
Clarification, 9 April 2015: the voluntary nature of the vaccination program has been clarified since this article was first published
