HEALTH chiefs were today coming under increasing pressure to vaccinate all children after a five-year-old boy was struck down by meningitis.

Nathan Rushin, a pupil at St Mark's Primary School in Whitehawk, Brighton, was last night "comfortable" after contracting what is thought to be meningococcal septicaemia, the most deadly strain of the illness.

Nathan's parents Andrew and Gill, of Maresfield Road, kept a vigil by their son's bedside at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

Doctors were expected to reveal later today whether he definitely has the killer strain.

Nathan's illness came to light on the same day that Sussex University student Ludovic Blot, 20, died from meningitis after being taken ill two weeks ago.

St Mark's was closed yesterday but parents gathered around its gates waiting for news.

They demanded East Sussex, Brighton and Hove Health Authority vaccinate their children to help prevent further cases.

Karen Comer, of Maresfield Road, said: "My daughter Chloe was in the same class as the boy and I'm worried sick.

"I've phoned my GP and he suggested a two-day course of antibiotics, but that's not enough. We need to vaccinate children now."

Mark Dahr, father of four-year-old Bethany, said: "I know about the horrors of this disease.

"We had a Japanese student with us who caught the worst strain.

"He had a headache one night and the next day he was paralysed in bed. We called the ambulance at 9am and he was dead by 6pm."

Wendy Forward, 29, of Maresfield Road, a friend of the Rushin family, said: "Nathan is a lovely, very loud little boy so it's quite a shock."

The Rushins' next door neighbour Ernest Smith, 77, said: "Nathan is a lovely little boy. When I sit out in the back garden he always pops his head over and has a chat."

"He is very lively and is always running around and playing outside."

Dr Rachel Jose, a consultant in communicable disease at the health authority, said: "It is still a suspected case so we wouldn't know which strain to vaccinate against. We would only use it for people who have come into close contact with him in a single case like this.

"At the moment it's not national policy to vaccinate and it would be very difficult to go against that."

Fellow students at Sussex University are to collect money for a memorial tree to Ludovic Blot.

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