Faye Burdett's death from meningitis B is harrowing, but public opinion should not trump scientific judgement

A vaccine against meningitis B, has been available since last year – but only to babies born on or after 1 July

Two-year-old Faye Burdett fought meningitis for 11 days before her death (PA)

You would have needed a heart of stone not to be moved by the pictures of Faye Burdett, the two-year-old from Maidstone, Kent, struck down by meningitis, who died on Valentine’s Day. Her parents posted pictures of their daughter in her hospital bed, covered in spots and blotches and festooned with wires and tubes, to raise awareness of the dreadful disease.

A vaccine against meningitis B, the strain from which Faye died, has been available since last year – but only to babies born on or after 1 July. The cost of vaccinating all children was considered too high. Now a parliamentary petition to extend the vaccinations to all children up to the age of 11 has attracted 650,000 signatures, a record.

It is not difficult to see why there has been an unprecedented outpouring of support. Parents have lived in terror of meningitis for generations because it targets the young, strikes with unnerving speed and ferocity and kills one in 10 of those it infects. As many as a quarter of those who survive suffer permanent disabilities, including brain damage and loss of limbs.

The meningitis B vaccine, called Bexsero, took 20 years to develop. It was licensed in 2013 but there then followed two years of bitter negotiations between the Department of Health and the manufacturer, Novartis, and UK distributor GlaxoSmithKline, over its cost. In November 2014, the health department accused the Swiss company of “holding the Government to ransom”, a claim Novartis hotly denied.

A deal was finally reached last year on what the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said was a cost-effective price, reported to be £20 a dose. Up to four doses are needed depending on age. By comparison the meningitis C vaccine, introduced in 1999, costs £7.50 a dose.

Based on these figures, providing the meningitis B vaccine to the seven million children in the UK aged up to 11, with an average of two doses each, would cost almost £300m. In a tax-funded system such as the NHS, to which we contribute according to means and take according to need, it is critical that the use of resources is seen to be fair. The JCVI has already ruled on the cost-effectiveness of the vaccine and decided against extending it to all young children. It would be wrong for public opinion to trump scientific judgement. However the rules on e-petitions say that any petition with more than 100,000 signatures will be considered for parliamentary debate – and the case should indeed be heard.

Campaigners might consider that there are two sides to this debate. Their anger, as so often in the past, is directed at the Government for refusing to pay for vital treatments. Yet it is the pharmaceutical companies whose high prices deny funds to other parts of the NHS.

If it is deemed too costly to extend vaccination to all under-11s, a compromise proposed by Sue Davie, chief executive of Meningitis Now, would be to introduce it for the under-fives, who are the most vulnerable. That would represent a huge, one-off boost to the UK market for the vaccine. As a gesture of goodwill, Novartis, the manufacturer, and GlaxoSmithKline, the distributor, should respond by making the vaccine available at a nominal cost.