A long-awaited vaccine cost effectiveness report is set to be put out to consultation more than two years on from the devastating death of a Maidstone toddler caused by meningitis.

The Government has finally published the report following pressure from Meningitis Now and other stakeholders.

The publication of the report, which was commissioned in 2014, includes a series of recommendations, and came one day before the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Public Health and Primary Care, Steve Brine MP, was to appear before the Petitions Committee to answer questions on its delay.

Dr Tom Nutt, CEO at Meningitis Now, said: “The publication of what is a very detailed report is a good thing and we are pleased that government has recognised the importance of our call for public scrutiny in an open and transparent manner.”

“Having previously submitted evidence about key concerns, when the draft report was produced three years ago, we will review this final report carefully and challenge any recommendations that we feel create a less favourable environment for vaccines”.

The report follows an e-petition in 2016 signed by more than 820,000 people, which called for the Men B vaccine to be given to children up to the age of 11. At the time, the Petitions and Health Committees heard evidence from families, charities.

The parents of Maidstone’s Faye Burdett say their daughter’s death ''highlighted inadequacies of the Men B vaccine programme'', and prompted a surge in people signing a petition to extend the vaccine to all children.

Jenny and Neil Burdett said: “On February 14, 2017, the first anniversary of Faye’s death, we went public to bring awareness that the promised CEMIPP report still hadn’t been published.

“We are extremely disappointed that it has taken a further year before the Government has published the report.

“We had hoped that Faye’s story and the support of 823,000 people signing the petition, would have been enough to influence the government into action much sooner.

“We had great faith in our parliamentary system and thought that the way to make a bigger change was to use their system to prove to the government that protection for children up to five was desperately needed.

“We continue to raise awareness about meningitis and will always remain disappointed and frustrated that the government deemed the protection of vulnerable children as ‘not cost effective’.”

Helen Whately MP added: "Parents want their children to be vaccinated against meningitis. After the tragic death of Faye Burdett, 800,000 people signed a petition calling for the meningitis B immunisation programme to be extended to older children. We were the first country in the world to vaccinate newborns against Meningitis B, but there’s a group of children who were too old for that vaccination who are still at risk.

"This week the Government published a report by an independent panel of experts which could affect future decisions about vaccination programmes. Like many campaigners, I had hoped it would help get more vaccination programmes approved. Unfortunately – though the report is highly technical and not entirely clear – it looks like the recommendations could mean fewer vaccination programmes would be counted as cost-effective.

"There’s a consultation on the recommendations and I will be responding with the points made to me; people recognise that there are difficult decisions to make about how money is spent, but they want those decisions to take into account the value we put on a child’s life and the worry for parents when they know they child is at risk of getting such a devastating and hard-to-spot disease like Meningitis.”