A STAGGERING 1,870 people a year, mainly children, are affected by meningitis. The consequences of this horrible bacterial disease are often devastating resulting in death, limb loss, brain damage and blindness.

It is now a year since the government recommended that a new vaccine MenB be given to babies over the age of two years but as yet this has not been done because GSK, the company providing the vaccine, is still haggling over the cost.

Are we to assume from those statistics that in the course of the time that has passed almost another 2,000 people have suffered or died needlessly?

That is shocking and unacceptable.

This is a serious matter of urgency. The Prime Minister David Cameron and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt need to step in, without hesitation and force the Department of Health to conclude these negotiations.

It should not take a whole year to agree on a price when so much is at stake.

The speed at which this disease moves is alarming. A perfectly well child can be dead within hours and no parent should be left fearing that this might happen in their family when something can be done to prevent it.

At the moment, a single vaccine costs £75 and there isn’t a parent in the land who wouldn’t find that money for their child if it was a matter of life and death.

But the Government has already ruled that MenB should be available on the NHS and the cost would be considerably less in a mass vaccination.

It is hard to believe in the western world that we have dragged our heels so badly in rolling this out across the UK.

And now enough is enough.

This really needs to be sorted fast.