‘Heartbreaking to know a vaccine could have saved our daughter’s lives’published at 09:52 GMT
09:52 GMT
Helen and Lee Draper lost their daughter Meg to meningitis in October 2025. She was a student at Bournemouth University.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Helen says seeing the outbreak in Kent is “absolutely tragic” and recalls the moment she first found out her daughter was unwell.
“Megan had called us on the Friday night to say she was feeling a bit lethargic, she didn’t really want to go out that evening. That rang alarm bells with us because Megan always wanted to go out and socialise, so that was the first point. She’d gone to bed, she’d woken up in the morning and she was nauseous and she had a rash on her stomach”.
Later the next day she’d felt really unwell, the rash had spread, so her parents urged her to call 111. They then told her to go to A&E to seek medical help.
Meg’s father Lee says it’s important for parents to be aware “the meningitis vaccinations that [their children] have doesn’t cover them against all strains”. That’s where communication has been “really poor over the years”.
“We assumed that Megan had had a meningitis vaccination, and to us we sent her off to university thinking that,” he says it was only afterwards that they’d found out she wasn’t vaccinated against the strain she had – meningitis B.
MenB jabs are offered freely on the NHS to all babies born on or after 2015. Anyone else looking to get vaccinated against this strain needs to pursue it privately, through high street pharmacies.
“It’s heartbreaking to find out afterwards that there was a vaccine available, we just weren’t aware that she needed it,” Lee says.