Free vaccine against meningitis B: its funding under discussion

The Ministry of Health will propose to all autonomous communities the inclusion of the Bexsero meningococcal B vaccine in their vaccination schedules. The proposal will be made in “the next few weeks”as regional sources have revealed Medical writing.

The goal of the Carolina Darias department is to make it happen public funding to extend vaccination to the entire National Health System (SNS). So far, the autonomous communities that have introduced the meningococcal B vaccine have had to face the costs that this entails alone.

Currently, it is only offered for free in a total of four autonomous communities: Castilla y León, Canary Islands, Andalusia and Catalonia. The first two were pioneers in 2019, last year Andalusia and Catalonia were incorporated in 2022. A three-dose guideline was established in all..

In the rest of the regions, it is the parents who have to pay for it and be able to administer it to their children. In addition to Bexsero (developed by GSK), the fHbp vaccine (Trumenba, Pfizer) for children and adolescents from 10 years of age is on sale.

In March, the Ministry of Health created a working group for the study of recommendations on vaccination against meningitis Bdepending on Presentation of the Program and Vaccination Register, to evaluate all the scientific evidence published since the last revision and to carry out the relative evaluation of the recommendations for their possible inclusion in the vaccination calendar. The evaluation, as learned from this journal, will be favorable to the inclusion of this vaccine in the services covered by the SNS.

Meningitis caused by type B meningococcus is the most common cause of bacterial meningitis at all ages. As stated by ANDAVAC, this disease has a greater incidence and severity during the first year of life. So heThe disease causes 10 to 20% mortality and 30% permanent sequelae. (psychomotor retardation, epilepsy, amputations) in survivors.

Thanks to this vaccine, it has been shown that the possibility of suffering from an invasive disease due to meningococcus B is reduced by more than 90 percent in vaccinated infants. For its part, the UK has implemented this vaccine since 2015, with studies revealing it has prevented nearly 300 deaths in young children. In addition to Bexsero, the fHbp vaccine is also available in Spain, which is indicated for children and adolescents from 10 years of age.

Since 2015 the Spanish Association of Pediatrics calls for the inclusion of the meningococcal vaccine as it prevents both deaths and sequelae left by the disease. Although it is a rare infection, the incidence of type B meningitis in the period 2019-2020 represented a total of 91 cases across Spain, 35% of all confirmed invasive meningococcal diseases among children under the age of one. year in the country according to the Spanish Association of Pediatrics.