The battle against meningitis

The word ‘meningococcal’, not surprisingly, strikes fear into the hearts of parents as the stories grow of the bacteria’s onset. So much so, that this year the Federal Government began paying for a vaccine to protect children between 1 and 19 against meningococcal C. But there is another major cause of meningitis – the pneumococcal bacteria that is just as deadly and debilitating and for which there is also a vaccine. Yet there is no government funding for this vaccine, leaving parents to weigh up the cost of up to $500 for a course of injections, or wear the risk to their children.

The word ‘meningococcal’, not surprisingly, strikes fear into the hearts of parents as the stories grow of the bacteria’s onset. So much so, that this year the Federal Government began paying for a vaccine to protect children between 1 and 19 against meningococcal C. But there is another major cause of meningitis – the pneumococcal bacteria that is just as deadly and debilitating and for which there is also a vaccine. Yet there is no government funding for this vaccine, leaving parents to weigh up the cost of up to $500 for a course of injections, or wear the risk to their children. KAREN HITCHEN, MOTHER: It’s a very incredibly sad thing.Our child, we’ve still got our child, but it’s just painful every day, really, thinking of how it could have been.She won’t, um, be dancing or singing like her sister or she won’t fall in love or have those sorts of dreams.KEITH HITCHEN, FATHER: It’s like half a grieving process and it’s not finished and it will never finish.It just doesn’t go away.It’s a process where every day we grieve like somebody’s dead.NATASHA JOHNSON: 14 years ago, Ella Hitchen contracted pneumococcal meningitis.She was just 9-weeks-old.And while she survived, the little girl emerged from intensive care with cerebral palsy and severe disability.KAREN HITCHEN: Ella is severely spastic quadraplegia.She has no use of her limbs.She can’ walk.She can’t feed herself.She can’t sort of move her hands in any meaningful way.She’s also incontinent.She has epilepsy.She’s on medication for epilepsy.She’s also visually impaired and she’s got no verbal communication skills.Um, intellectually, it’s an unknown.NATASHA JOHNSON: Compared to meningococcal, with its terrible rashes and lost limbs, pneumococcal meningitis is an illness the community knows little about.DR JENNY ROYLE, ROYAL CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL, MELBOURNE: It’s just as deadly and just as important.Pneumococcal meningitis is equally as an important disease as meningococcal disease.NATASHA JOHNSON: Up to 10 per cent of children who get pneumococcal meningitis will die and 20 per cent will suffer extreme disability, like Ella Hitchen.It’s more prevalent than meningococcal and the leading cause of meningitis in children under the age of five.DR JENNY ROYLE: We estimate that, in Australia, about 62 healthy children under five will have pneumococcal meningitis each year of the strains that we can protect for in this new vaccine.Meningococcal meningitis, or meningococcal septicaemia, causes about 50 cases in children under five when you look at the type-C, which is the new vaccine type.NATASHA JOHNSON: There’s a vaccine available to prevent both illnesses, but only the meningococcal vaccine is funded by the Federal Government under a universal vaccination program.That means parents like Raffaela Santilli have to foot the bill of the pneumococcal shots, which cost between $100 and $110 a dose.And when you consider that a baby need three doses, that can amount to more than $500 all up.RAFFAELA SANTILLI, MOTHER: It’s expensive.She’s over six months, so she’s had two vaccines – the first is $100 and the second is $110.I was a bit surprised but it’s worth it.NATASHA JOHNSON: Dr Jenny Royle from Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital says she wrestles daily recommending a vaccine she knows can save lives, but knows many can’t afford.DR JENNY ROYLE: I think the current system is unfair.Just yesterday, at my immunisation clinic, I saw a family with three young children under the age of three years and we discussed this vaccine.It was so difficult for me to recommend a vaccine which clearly was very expensive for them.TINA McCARTHY, THE MENINGITIS CENTRE: What will happen is that those families who can afford that will be paying for it and those less well off families will be put in the position of risk, where there’s the potential of getting a life-threatening illness.NATASHA JOHNSON: The Meningitis Centre has been campaigning for free pneumococcal injections since the vaccine became available in December 2000.Now the Royal Children’s Hospital has call for a subsidy for all children under the age of two.The Government says that, while its immunisation advisory body has recommended universal childhood pneumococcal vaccinations, it ranked them a low priority.SENATOR KAY PATTERSON, HEALTH MINISTER: Obviously there will be differences of opinion, but the advice I’ve been given, in terms of the range of vaccines that this committee have advised could be used – this pneumococcal is not at the top of the list – there are other vaccines which come ahead of that.And meningococcal was one, for example.NATASHA JOHNSON: The Government provides free pneumococcal injections for indigenous Australians and children with compromised immune systems who are most at risk.But Senator Patterson says an overstretched health dollar can’t yet provide a universal program.SENATOR KAY PATTERSON: It is difficult and I know it’s hard for people to understand of a child to have this particular illness.But it is a responsibility that I have and have to assume to make sure that we get the best outcome for every dollar we spend on health.DR JENNY ROYLE: The longer we don’t use this vaccine, the more children that will come in with vaccine-preventable meningitis.NATASHA JOHNSON: So, potentially, lives are at risk?DR JENNY ROYLE: Yes.NATASHA JOHNSON: While a vaccine wasn’t available when Ella Hitchen got the disease, her parents argue it’s better economics to pay for the costs than the disability that results.KEITH HITCHEN: It’s probably cost us and society – you know, the community services, the taxpayer – a couple of hundred thousand dollars.KAREN HITCHEN: I think we’ve got a responsibility as a society to protect our children from any sort of damage and any sort of suffering that can happen if the extreme of this disease takes hold.KERRY O’BRIEN: And in some situations, how do you measure the cost?(Source: ABC, Natasha Johnson, 17/06/2003)