COLERNE mum Carrie Richardson is among the parents this week celebrating winning a campaign to make the Meningitis B vaccine available to babies free on the NHS.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced on Sunday that delivery of Bexsero, the vaccine against the killer disease, was expected to begin in September.

Campaigners have been demanding it be part of the childhood immunisation programme since the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation recommended it a year ago.

Since then there have been negotiations over cost with the vaccination’s previous owner, Novartis, before the vaccine was bought by pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline last month.

Mr Hunt said: “We can go ahead this year with rolling out the meningitis B vaccine and that’s something families, particularly those with young children, will really welcome.”

It will cost an estimated £16m a year to roll out the programme, which will see the jab given to babies at the age of two months, four months and one year.

Mrs Richardson and her nine-year-old daughter Georgia were part of the Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF) national campaign #WheresOurVaccine. Georgia lost fingers and toes after contracting meningitis and septicaemia in 2008 when she was just two.

Mrs Richardson said: “I am really happy the vaccine is being introduced at last.”

MRF say the disease leads to death in 10 per cent of all cases and to long-term after effects in a further 36 per cent.