Why students are being offered MenB vaccine nowpublished at 16:43 GMT 18 March
Philippa Roxby
Health reporter, BBC News
The MenB vaccine has started being offered to some students at the
University of Kent this afternoon. It’s expected that 5,000 students will be
contacted and told they can have the jab.
So why is this vaccine part of the plan now, and not before?
Vaccines are not usually the first line of defence in an outbreak
of this kind but given how serious the situation is, UK health officials say
vaccinating lots of students is a sensible extra precaution.
The protection from vaccines doesn’t kick in immediately – it
takes a few weeks, and booster doses may be needed. But in the long term,
students will be protected for a few years against most strains of Meningitis
B.
The MenB vaccine is available to babies in the UK, since 2015, but
it’s not offered to anyone who missed out including current teenagers. That’s
down to a decision made by the UK’s vaccine experts that it wasn’t cost
effective for the NHS – which the government has now asked them to revisit.
Antibiotics have been the first choice to help control this
outbreak. They work more quickly than vaccines, and are seen as the best way to
kill bacteria in the throat and help stop the spread of the disease. But one
dose only works for a few days.
Antibiotics have been given to people who are close contacts of
anyone who is ill with meningitis.
