A PUBLIC health supremo who hails from East Lancashire has helped spearhead the revolutionary new vaccine for meningitis C.

Professor Brian Duerden, from Burnley, is deputy director of the Government's Public Health Laboratory Service, which has carried out years of scientific research in the search of a breakthrough.

Professor Duerden, 50, whose mother Mildred lives in Westbury Close, Burnley, has played a major role in the development of the new vaccine.

Professor Duerden and his Brierfield-born wife Marjorie, who now live near London, both attended the former Nelson Grammar School.

His mother said: "I am very pleased that Brian has followed this career because it was a topic he was always interested in. This development is very exciting."

Professor Duerden is from a family of cricket fanatics and the family home in Westbury Close was even named Seedhill - after the Nelson club's ground. As a child, Mr Duerden kept score for Nelson in the Lancashire League.

His late father Cyril was one of the best amateur batsmen in the Lancashire League and later became the league's deputy chairman.

Public health officials in East Lancashire were today beginning to work out how the vaccine will be phased in across the district. They will try and offer the vaccine to babies under 13 months before the start of winter. Teenagers aged between 15 and 17 will be next in line, while other children aged between one and five will be offered the jab from next year.

Dr Stephen Morton, East Lancashire's public health director, said: "Obviously we welcome the new vaccine, although we will be presented with a certain operational problems including how to introduce the vaccine to so many children."

Meningitis C now accounts for about 40 per cent of all cases compared to 30 per cent at the start of the decade. The new vaccine will not prevent meningitis B which is responsible for more cases overall, although meningitis C is more likely to be fatal for children under five and 15 to 19-year-olds.

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