York student urges teenagers to get the meningitis B vaccine

Leo Strider’s experience highlights why health experts are urging young people to take up a new NHS meningitis B vaccination programme.

Dr Tom Nutt, chief executive of charity Meningitis Now, said meningitis remained a “truly awful disease” that can kill within 24 hours and claims the lives of around one in 10 people who develop it.

He said: “The reason why vaccinating teenagers and young adults is so important is because they are the second most at-risk group of that disease in the population.”

Dr Nutt said many survivors were left with life-changing effects, including limb loss, brain injury, sensory impairments and lasting psychological trauma.

He said young people are particularly vulnerable because meningococcal bacteria are carried more commonly among teenagers and students.

“When you get to that young adult, student age group, you actually find that the carriage of that bacteria goes up to one in four,” he said.

“Young people are socialising, sharing drinks, vapes and food, kissing and mixing on university campuses. That’s why students, particularly first-year students, are at increased risk.”

Dr Nutt said he “very much welcomed” the new NHS programme, which is being offered to school leavers and students entering residential university or college accommodation for the first time this autumn.