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Supporting Content

• Jane Wells's 30 year Meningitis campaign

  Jane Wells talks us through her determination of the 30 year campaign.

  Duration: 4:54

• Meningitis in Stroud: Tuning back the clock to 1986

  80's ´óÏó´«Ã½ reporter Gerald Hine-Haycock takes us through the headlines and hype in 1986.

  Duration: 5:39

• VIDEO: Levana Henson

  15 year old Levana Henson hasn't let Meningitis hold her back.

  Duration: 0:45

• VIDEO: 1986, When Stroud Hit The Headlines

  How the emerging crisis in Stroud was reported thirty years ago.

  Duration: 1:16
  See all clips

• Broadcasting from Meningitis Now

• Meningitis – 30 Years On

  Stroud made national headlines in 1986 for the deadly and devastating outbreak of meningitis which had hit the area. Stroud residents had to endure the stigma which reports of the disease brought; tourism and house sales suffered, people avoided public events such as swimming galas and across the country, Stroud became a byword for the potentially fatal infection.

  ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Gloucestershire and ´óÏó´«Ã½ Points West are marking the 30th anniversary of the outbreak with a series of programmes and features.

  Included are interviews with survivors of the disease and a live broadcast with the founders of Meningitis Now, a charity set up by a group of parents and campaigners at the height of the outbreak in 1986.

  There will also be special broadcasts by former ´óÏó´«Ã½ TV journalist Gerald Hine-Haycock who has come out of retirement to update his original reports from the 1980s.   

  ‘Meningitis – 30 Years On’ begins on Monday 12 September 2016.

• Gerald Hine-Haycock: Reporting the meningitis outbreak in 1986

  I've covered the whole of the region filming major news events, but of the many reports I filed to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in the 80's, the meningitis outbreak in Stroud stands out.

  Local people were understandably mystified and fearful and as more children fell ill, that fear turned to anger. 

  Looking back three full decades and watching those news reports again, it’s striking just how little the health experts knew. I’m surprised just how open they were to reporters like me.

  We’ve come a long way since the shadow that the Meningitis cast, education and awareness of the disease improved after this outbreak. It’s not much comfort for those Gloucestershire parents whose children died or were left disabled by the 1986 outbreak.

  For me it’s a shock that so little is known about the cause of the epidemic, considering just how far medical understanding and clinical research have come in the last three decades.