The GSD has issued a statement calling on the Government to confirm whether it will offer the Meningitis B vaccine to all  Gibraltar students.

A statement from the GSD follows below:

The GSD seeks confirmation from the Government as to whether it will offer the Meningitis B vaccine to all  Gibraltar students. Following the outbreak of meningitis B amongst students in Kent and Canterbury in  March 2026, the GHA offered Meningitis B vaccines to any Gibraltar student at the University of Kent who  was studying at the affected campus and had not previously had the vaccine or hadn’t been able to receive  it in the UK before they returned home for Easter. At the time, the NHS was also carrying out a campaign  which was specifically targeted at University of Kent students.  

In recent days, the NHS has announced that this campaign will be significantly widened so that 1 million  young people in the final year of secondary school and 18–25-year-olds heading to university or residential  education for the first time in autumn will be offered the 2-dose vaccine. 

Joelle Ladislaus MP, Shadow for Health said: “In March, the GHA clarified that the parents of people born in  2015 or after will have been offered vaccination against meningitis B for their children at 2 months, 3 months  and 13 months. Consequently, university age students will not have been vaccinated against Meningitis B. Seeing as the NHS advice is that international students under 25 entering their first year at university should,  where possible, receive their first dose of the Meningitis B in their home country, the Government should  now clarify whether it will be following suit and offering the Meningitis B vaccine to all university age  students. This issue is especially pressing given that the newest cohort of Gibraltar students will leave for  university within the next 3 to 4 months and parents have increasingly and rightly been raising concerns with  the opposition, and more generally, about their children’s Meningitis B vaccination status.”