When Stacey Chater and her husband, Ralph, got an answer about why their son, Brayden, had died so suddenly and unexpectedly they were left reeling.
Usually fit and healthy, Brayden was just 23 when he deteriorated from what seemed like flu symptoms – a fever and runny nose – during the course of a day.
By 9pm on November 18, 2022, Stacey found Brayden unresponsive on his bedroom floor. Later that night he was deemed brain dead, and tragically
died the following day.
“We didn’t know what had happened. It was a horrible five days until we were called and told Brayden had died from meningococcal B,” Stacey tells New Idea.
“My immediate thought was that he’d had his vaccine for meningococcal.”
It was explained the standard meningococcal vaccine that children in Australia get at 12 months and then as teenagers covers four different strains of meningococcal but not meningococcal B.
“There is a vaccine for meningococcal B, but at that stage it was only free in South Australia,” Stacey who lives in Wollongong, NSW, explains. “It seemed crazy to me. I couldn’t understand it.”
In the dark months that followed, Stacey tried to hold it together for Brayden’s sister, Shayne, now 33, and brother Harrison, 23, but all she could think about was how entirely preventable Brayden’s death had been.
Just months later it led her to join the board of the Meningitis Centre of Australia where she discovered the tiny, not-for-profit was fighting an enormous battle: to get meningococcal B on the free immunisation schedule around Australia.
“In March 2023, when I joined, it was only South Australia that did it but now, three years on and five states do it,” Stacey says. “Queensland came on last year. A young girl from the Gold Coast [Bella Fidler] died around the same time as Brayden from meningococcal B and her parents fought so hard there.”
But, despite Stacey’s best efforts – meeting countless MPs, sharing Brayden’s story, getting 42,000 signatures on a petition and delivering 22,000 letters pleading for the meningococcal B vaccine in New South Wales –it hasn’t happened, yet. Western Australia is also yet to come on board.
“Number one they cite the expense and then they cite the rarity [of meningococcal B] but in New South Wales in last year there were 35 cases,” Stacey says.
“That’s in comparison to the 11 shark attacks in New South Wales but the government is putting $120 million into shark prevention. To vaccinate babies and kids against meningococcal B would cost $20 million a year.
“I’m not saying they shouldn’t do the shark thing, but it’s a comparison. It makes me so angry and frustrated.
“So many times I’ve felt upset and like I can’t do it any more,” she goes on. “But then I look at a photo of Brayden and I think ‘I’ll keep going for you.’ Each positive outcome we’ve had gives me a little bit of fire.”
October 5 was worldwide Meningitis Awareness Day and Stacey is determined to keep making her message heard. She says it’s not fair for some Aussie kids to have the free vaccine and others to not even know it exists.
It’s a battle that’s she’s hopeful of winning soon –and only then will she rest.
“I think and hope Brayden would be proud of me,” Stacey says. “When it gets tough I can hear him saying, ‘You’ve got this, Mum. This is our purpose.’”
For more information, visit meningitis.com.au
