Livia was an outgoing 19-year-old who loved socialising, going clubbing, going to festivals, going on holidays. On 15 June 2022 Livia felt unwell and was sent home from work. She complained of the worst headache she had ever had, and she took a couple of paracetamols and went to bed. Devastatingly, she never woke up again. Sadly it took 16 weeks after the initial cause of death was declared unknown, to perform 100s of tests before meningitis was found to be the cause.

Meningitis does affect all ages but for us our aim is to raise the awareness with Liv’s age group, as we weren’t aware of the known secondary peak of high risk in this age group. As a family it’s hard not to blame ourselves as we do think if we were aware Livia could still be here with us living her life to the full as she did. To also then find out that there is a vaccine for meningitis B that is sadly only available privately is devastating. If we were also aware of this we would have definitely paid for Livia to be vaccinated and she would still be here. We will work in Livia’s memory to continue to fundraise for the Meningitis Research Foundation, and raise the awareness of meningitis B in Livia’s age group and the existence of the privately available meningitis B vaccination, and to better protect this age group to campaign for this vaccination to be made available under the NHS as it currently is for babies and toddlers, all to try and stop another family having to go through the heart ache and pain we have and continue to do each day without Livia here with us.