Northland doctor urges parents to vaccinate kids for MenW

A Northland family doctor is warning parents that meningococcal disease is deadly and children need to be vaccinated against it. Free vaccinations will be offered to teenagers and children under four in Northland from next Wednesday. There have been 29 cases of the particularly nasty W strain of the disease this year, more than twice as many as last year. Seven of those cases have been in Northland, where MenW has killed three people since the middle of the year. A Whangarei GP, Andrew Miller, told RNZ health correspondent Karen Brown, the vaccine works and children should be given it.