On the 9th of June, 2023, amidst the normalcy of ordinary life, our family was shattered. Our son, Alfie Jake Mullans, a beacon of joy and potential, had his life cut painfully short. Meningitis stripped us of a bright future that should have been, ruthlessly snatching Alfie away at the tender age of eighteen. Every dream, every aspiration Alfie harboured, ripped out of our lives, leaving us in a storm of devastation and lost hopes.

I am campaigning in Alfie’s memory so that fewer families have to endure this same pain.

A MenB vaccine exists, but on the NHS it has only been routinely offered to babies born from September 2015. When the MenB programme was introduced, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommended routine infant vaccination but did not recommend an adolescent programme, saying it could not support that recommendation because of uncertainty over cost-effectiveness and the risk that it could displace more health benefit elsewhere in the NHS. 

That means many teenagers and young adults missed out simply because they were born too early. Unless their families knew to get it privately and could afford to pay, they were left unprotected.

I am calling on the government to:

1. Fund a catch-up MenB vaccination programme for all 16 to 23-year-olds who missed routine vaccination because they were born before September 2015.

This is the most urgent step. A whole generation has been left in a gap between policy and protection. They are no less vulnerable simply because of when they were born.

2. Run a national awareness campaign so parents and young people understand that many older teenagers and young adults are not protected against MenB on the NHS.

This matters now more than ever, with the ongoing outbreak in Kent placing increasing numbers of young people at risk. In England in 2024/25, MenB caused 100% of laboratory-confirmed invasive meningococcal disease cases in 15 to 19-year-olds and 97% in 20 to 24-year-olds (gov.uk).

I have told the media that the government needs to find some money to roll out this vaccine, and I have also said that saving my son’s life wasn’t seen as cost effective. Those words come from the most painful truth a parent can live with: protection existed, but it was out of reach for too many families.

No family should lose a child because a vaccine was available, but not offered to the generation that missed out.

Please sign this petition and help me push for a MenB catch-up programme for 16 to 23-year-olds before more families are left with this heartbreak.