Wokingham mum becomes MRF Ambassador after her son survived the disease

Sue Baggott from Wokingham has become an official Ambassador for charity Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF) following her family’s experience of the disease.

Sue’s son James became seriously unwell with meningococcal septicaemia at four years old. She explains, “James woke up in the night unwell and by 8am he had a very high temperature and rash under his arm. Luckily I had a copy of MRF’s Baby Watch leaflet so I checked his symptoms against that. I did the ‘glass test’ on the rash while on the phone to the doctor and by 10am we were in the high dependency unit at Royal Berkshire Hospital. Thankfully, James responded to the antibiotics that he was given very quickly. We consider ourselves to be incredibly lucky on many levels; lucky that we had the MRF leaflet and lucky that the doctors reacted so quickly.

“While James was lucky to survive the disease, it did have an impact on him as he grew up but he worked hard to overcome these challenges and he’s now 22 and has just been awarded a 2:1 BSc (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Lincoln. He has now applied to do a Masters there in Psychology Research. He is fascinated by the workings of the brain after he himself had a brain trauma.

“I’ve now been trained as an Ambassador and I can’t wait to get stuck into the role so that hopefully I play my part in defeating this disease by raising awareness in my area.”

Sue will be joining a group of over 100 MRF Ambassadors in the UK whose role it is to raise funds and awareness in their community and work towards the charity’s goal of a world free from meningitis.

Rob Dawson, Director of Support at MRF said, “Sue has already helped us so much over the years to raise awareness of meningitis, even attending the Houses of Parliament to help us campaign for the MenB vaccine to be introduced and taking part in fundraising events. We are delighted to make that role official and we look forward to working together more.”