Hansard

I begin by thanking the minister for his letter of 21 March, informing me of the JCVI decision to recommend the introduction of meningitis B vaccine. I have raised the issue with him on behalf of constituents on a number of occasions.

I immediately forwarded Mr Matheson’s letter to my constituent, Mr Michael Pattie, who has been campaigning and fundraising on the issue since he lost his 13-year-old son, David, to that terrible disease in 1999. I first encountered Mr Pattie last July, when he wrote to me to express his bitter disappointment when the JCVI failed to recommend the introduction of the vaccine because it was not cost effective. In that letter, he wrote:

“After years of efforts, campaigning and fundraising we finally have the Holy Grail, a vaccine for the B strain of the disease which was passed by the European Health Governing Body as safe and effective earlier this year and I personally am devastated that this decision by JCVI not to implement has been taken in the UK.”

I am very pleased that that decision that has now been reversed.

The meningitis B vaccine will give a 73 per cent protection level, but the catch 22 is that cost effectiveness cannot be ascertained unless it is implemented. However, the B strain, which accounts for half of all meningitis deaths, can lead to lifelong disability and we cannot put a price on a life, particularly that of a child. It is surely significant and persuasive that the estimated lifetime cost of looking after someone who is severely disabled by meningitis is £3 million.

Today we have heard about the increase in the immunisation budget of a considerable 85.2 per cent in a year. That will increase further in 2015-16 to almost £21 million, which will be a cumulative increase of 137.5 per cent in just three years. Even by the standards of NHS inflation, that is a considerable rise, but it is very clear from what we have learned during the debate so far that, in the long run, much more money will be saved.

Given the Government’s preventative agenda, I would be interested to know if any work is being done to quantify how much money is being saved, particularly through the most recent immunisations. It has already been mentioned that, from May last year, all babies born in Scotland were offered a rotavirus vaccine for the first time. That will protect thousands of children and reduce costly hospital admissions.

Until recently, I was not aware of the term “rotavirus”, but as a mother of two, I certainly had plenty experience of it. My children are now aged 16 and 24, so they did not receive that protection, and I remember how frightening severe vomiting and diarrhoea in babies and young children can be. I remember several GP calls and waits in Yorkhill. On one occasion, my daughter became severely dehydrated and had a hospital stay of several days. Apart from the parental distress, the time that it takes clinical staff to deal with that must cost a fortune. As has been said, every year 1,200 babies have to go to hospital because of the symptoms of rotavirus, and it is estimated that all children will become infected at least once before the age of five, although I should perhaps put that in the past tense. That is a huge amount of staff time and NHS money that is being saved.

One could say exactly the same thing about the other vaccines that we have heard about that have been more recently introduced, such as the HPV vaccine, which protects against 70 per cent of cervical cancer cases. Although it has only been in place since 2008, we are already seeing evidence of its effectiveness. One cannot put a price on that. It must be extremely expensive to treat a young mother with cervical cancer, but there is also the human cost and the cost to society more generally. The programmes that the minister mentioned, such as the shingles and influenza programmes, tell us a lot about how much money we could save through the immunisation programme.

I will finish with the words of my constituent Michael Pattie, who has said that, although he does not see an immediate end to meningitis B, the vaccine is

“a massive and significant step.”

In 1999, when he lost his son, he vowed that he would do all that he could to prevent other families from going through what he went through. Needless to say, he says that he feels “delighted” at the news. That is a positive note to end on.