Toby Perkins – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Toby Perkins on 2016-02-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy to extend the meningitis B vaccination programme to all infants.

Jane Ellison

National immunisation programmes are introduced on the advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the independent expert body that advises the Government on all immunisation matters. Following JCVI’s recommendation, we introduced a Meningococcal B (MenB) infant programme.

Since September 2015, all infants aged two months have been offered the MenB vaccine, followed by a second dose at four months and a booster at 12 months.

We are proud to have been the first country in the world to introduce a national, publicly-funded MenB immunisation programme for infants using the Bexsero vaccine.