The mother of a toddler who spent eight days fighting meningitis is urging other parents to vaccinate their children against the deadly disease, writes Victoria Owen.

Rachel Conway said she did not want anyone to go through the same nightmare she did when two-year-old Reece Palmer contracted the virus a month ago.

The youngster is fit and well again now, but Miss Conway, of Stanbridge Close, Banbury, wants to make sure others realise the dangers of meningitis.

She said: "The vaccination for meningitis C is so important. Reece is definitely going to have one.

"Any parent who doesn't get their child inoculated will regret it if they find themselves in the same situation that I was in. If their child did get meningitis, they'd never forgive themselves." The 21-year-old mum recalled the fear she felt when her son became ill, at his father's Forgeway home in Banbury.

Realising it was meningitis, she and dad Chris Palmer immediately took Reece to Banbury's Horton Hospital. She said: "It was all such a rush, but as they were testing him the spots and rash started to appear before our eyes. We caught it just in time. If we'd left it just an hour longer things could've been a lot worse.

"I was really worried when the doctors confirmed it was meningitis C and I just burst into tears. I just didn't know what to do. My heart was in my mouth."

Miss Conway is now encouraging parents to take their children straight to hospital if they think they are suffering from meningitis. "I would just get down to casualty. I wouldn't wait around it's all down to time. You have to realise that the rash is the last symptom to come don't wait for it to appear.

"If you don't act immediately, it's your whole life that could be devastated. Your child could die or be left with no limbs."

Reece had not received the meningitis C jab before he was struck by the virus because his age group had not been called up as part of the countywide initiative.

Pre-school children are being inoculated during the next few months, while 15 to 17-year-olds and under-twos have already been offered the vaccine.

Oxfordshire Health Authority staff said there had been 21 cases of meningitis since January, but only one of those was a C strain case evidence that the vaccine had proved successful.