HEALTH bosses have quashed fears that the borough is facing a meningitis crisis.

Thurrock Primary Care Trust has moved to reassure concerned parents that there is no 'cluster of meningitis' in Thurrock, despite the news that a 14-month-old girl came within hours of dying from the deadly disease -- the second case in a month to hit the area.

Two weeks ago the Gazette reported on the tragic death of 18-month-old, Lewis Stowerf, of Dickens Avenue, Tilbury.

The toddler died after both staff at Basildon hospital and a local GP failed to detect he had contracted pneumoccocal meningitis.

Now we can reveal that a second toddler, Bobbi Constantine, who has links to baby Lewis, narrowly avoided dying after she contracted a different strain of the disease, meningococcal meningitis.

Though the two tots never met, Bobbi's father, Matt-hew, works in the same warehouse as Lewis' grandfather, sparking fears that the disease was passed on through contact between the two.

Bobbi, of Lambourne, East Tilbury, fell critically ill while visiting her grandparents in Norfolk.

Bobbi's mum, Jaimie Fink, 26, became concerned at her daughter's condition soon after arriving at her parents Norfolk home and immediately took her to see a local GP.

The GP quickly realised the seriousness of Bobbi's condition and rushed her immediately to King's Lynn hospital from where she was transferred to Addenbrooke's.

Dad, Matthew, 25, said: "Doctors had given her an hour to live and they really didn't expect her to get from King's Lynn to Addenbrooke's and I'm sure that if it wasn't for the doctors at Addenbrooke's then she wouldn't be here now.

"Thankfully she pulled through and was put in intensive care for a week. But even then, the doctors were saying that there was a chance that fingers and toes could fall off and we were waiting in fear for that to happen. They were expecting her kidneys and lungs to fail and they even thought she had had a stroke at one stage. But thankfully she is fine.

"We have to take her back every week to see a plastic surgeon because the marks left on her body are so bad but we are just grateful she is here." Matthew is concerned that he may have inadvertently passed on the disease to his daughter after discovering he works in the same Tilbury warehouse as Lewis Stowerf's grandfather.

He said: "It was coincidence I didn't really know him until someone said that he had been off because his grandson had died of meningitis, but there could be something there.

"People should be made aware of this because there are now two deaths and those are the ones that we know about.

"I want a message to go out to every other parent in the borough, meningitis is a thing to be scared of, it's a killer, within an hour my daughter was covered in a rash and she could easily have been taken away from us."