Spending about $800 on meningococcal vaccines for my two children did make for a sad outlook on our Christmas budget - but what about the parents who don't have a spare grand lying around?
In the past week alone two babies in WA fell ill with the W strain of the deadly bug and less than a month ago a child died from the disease.
So far five West Australians have lost their lives to meningococcal disease.
With 41 infections to date in WA, the number of of people falling ill with the disease has almost doubled compared to last year and the highest incident rate, accounting for nearly half on cases, was in children aged 0 to four years old.
Teenagers aged between 15 and 19 receive a free combined vaccination against the A, C, W and Y strands through school or university as part of the recently introduced WA Meningococcal ACWY program. Babies only receive a vaccine against the C strand at 12 months.
My kids are three and five, so the latest death of a young child finally spurred me into action and I asked my GP if she recommended the additional vaccines against the potentially fatal disease.
"Absolutely," was the short answer.
But the two additional vaccines against strands ACWY and B, which are not covered by the national immunisation program, don't come cheap.
Pharmaceutical Society of Australia WA spokesman Chris Shenton said more parents of younger children were forking out $65 for the B strand vaccine and $140 for the ACWY strand through their GP.
"We've seen an uptake in the number of requests to us for meningococcal vaccines both for the ACWY vaccines and the B version," he said.
"I had a call from a mum on Friday afternoon and she was so, so relieved when I had some ACWY in stock, I get the sense there had been a lot of phone calls before she rang me.
Considering the booster and the obligatory doctors' appointments and you are faced with a stark $400 per child.
WA's Australian Medial Association president Omar Korshid agreed that in a lot of the cases the most catastrophic outcomes were in babies, who currently only receive protection against one strain of the disease on the national immunisation register.
"The W strain has really reared its head this year and last year," he said.
He urged parents of young children to consider the vaccination, despite its hefty price tag.
"It's certainly not an inexpensive vaccine. My advice would be 'go to your GP and chat about it'," he added.
Dr Korshid called on Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt to step up and come up with the money for vaccinations for young children.
"They need to work with the pharmaceutical industry to make these vaccines affordable because the only reason they are not on the register right now," Dr Korshid said.
"There must be ways to bring the price down and make them available to younger children so we won't see any more of these horrible stories."
Protecting your children against potentially fatal diseases should not be a question of money.
If my child lives and yours dies should not depend on our disposable incomes, and this needs to be fixed by the health department as a matter of urgency.
