The government has rejected a petition pleading for the meningitis B vaccine to be given to all children, not just babies.
Thousands of people from Brighton and Hove were among more than 800,000 nationwide to have signed the petition.
Petitions with more than 100,000 signatures are debated in Parliament. The meningitis B petition is reported to be the most popular petition on the Parliament website.
It said: “All children are at risk from this terrible infection yet the government plan to only vaccinate two to five-month-olds.
“There needs to be a rollout programme to vaccinate all children, at least up to age 11.
“Meningococcal infections can be very serious, causing meningitis, septicaemia and death.”
The Department for Health responded by saying that the vaccine “is offered to infants, free on the NHS, at two months with further doses at four and 12 months”.
It said: “The programme, as advised by independent experts, offers protection to those at highest risk.”
It added that Britain was the first –and to date the only – country to introduce a national, publicly funded immunisation programme for infants using the Bexsero vaccine.
The department said: “We are leading the world in offering children protection from this devastating disease.
“National immunisation programmes are introduced on the advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the independent expert body that advises the Government on all immunisation matters.
“(The) JCVI reviewed all available evidence before it advised on eligibility for the Bexsero vaccine.
“It recommended that meningitis B immunisation should be routinely offered to the group of children at the highest risk – infants at two months of age with a further dose at four months and a booster at 12 months, provided that the vaccine could be procured at a cost-effective price.
“There is a duty on the Secretary of State for Health to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the recommendations of the JCVI are implemented.”
