The Lizard Lifeboat crew has joined the family of a promising Cornish student who died suddenly from meningitis in campaigning to get more teenagers vaccinated.

Teygan Sugrue was 19, and just weeks into his Russian and economics studies at the University of Manchester, when he was killed by the disease on November 1 last year.

Although devastated by their loss, his family decided to raise awareness among young people of the meningitis ACWY vaccine before they travel to university, where they could be particularly vulnerable to catching the illness.

Teygan's aunt Jo, who lives in Ruan Minor, said: "He was over the moon to get into Manchester university to study his beloved Russian. He had taught himself Russian to be able to get into university.

"He loved university, he seemed to blossom and grow there and make lots of lovely friends."

Teygan went to a Hallowe'en party one evening, and when he felt under the weather the next day it was put down to the after effects of the night before, and he was left to sleep it off. It was only in the evening, when he went to get up and then collapsed, that a friend realised something was wrong and an ambulance was called, but he was dead shortly after arriving at hospital due to septicaemia caused by meningitis B.

Teygan's mother Ailsa described the news of Teygan's death as "like a bomb had gone off in our lives."

She said: "The first thing we heard about what happened was on the Monday, he died on the Sunday.

"It was quite traumatic, and a huge shock to us and the whole family.

"Talking to friends of his afterwards, he had showed no signs of meningitis."

Ailsa said: "For a while we were so numb, but we finally started to think 'why had this happened?'"

They talked to his friends, and to family friends, and realised that there was not much awareness of how sudden and deadly meningitis could be, especially among teenagers starting university.

The family set up a fundraising campaign for Meningitis Now, a charity that carries out research, campaigns for vaccinations and raising awareness, and provides support for people after they or a family member has had the disease.

After raising almost £8,000 since Christmas with sponsored events, they switched their energies to raising the profile of the new meningitis ACWY campaign, which promotes a vaccine against four separate strains of the infection.

Ailsa said: "We don't want another family to have to go through all that trauma.

"From losing him we have got to do something positive, that's the only way we are going to get through this."

Jo added: "Teygan died of meningitis B, and a vaccine is not currently available to teenagers on the NHS. The focus is on ACWY because there have been cases of meningitis W, B is a lot more rare."

Ailsa said that her husband David, a doctor at Marazion, had a large family, and they had all pitched in to help.

Although Teygan lived in Angarrack, his grandfather Simon was secretary of the Lizard RNLI in the 1980s, and Jo arranged for a campaign poster to be attached to the back of the boat during a practice launch, to try and get the message to a wider audience.

Jo said: "The more awareness, the more teenagers will get vaccinated, so less families will have to go through this devastation that we have all felt and still feel."

There are approximately 1,500 reported cases of meningococcal disease each year in the UK, and although most people recover, it can rapidly result in death or severe after-effects.

The bacteria can be passed from person to person by coughing, sneezing and intimate kissing, and new university entrants are at high risk as they enter a new environment and mix with new people, meaning the weeks leading up to university are a key time to get vaccinated.

For more information visit www.meningitisnow.org, to make a donation in memory of Teygan visit www.justgiving.com/Teygan