PARENTS are being urged to check their children’s meningitis vaccination records after three deaths in Ireland in the past three weeks.
The HSE revealed yesterday that three people had died with a total of 11 cases recorded, alerting health chiefs to a concerning increase of cases from last year.
Dr Suzanne Cotter of the HSE’s Health Protection Surveillance Centre has warned that some children in Ireland may not be fully vaccinated despite parents believing they are.
This is because some children may have missed their 13th-month visit.
Speaking to RTE’s Morning Ireland she said: “With this particular type of meningitis, it’s caused by a bacteria called meningococcal and it is more common in the winter time. Many of us carry it in our nasopharynx and we don’t have any problem with it.
“For a minority of people, it invades the system and then can present as meningitis and other symptoms.
“It is passed person to person, however, normally people don’t know they have it and they don’t know they’ve passed it to anybody.
“The people who get meningitis aren’t able to identify obviously who they’ve got it from.
“So, it is relatively rare to have it but at the same time we are seeing an increase in the numbers that we would normally see over a two-week period.
“11 cases is higher than normal and for that reason, we want to raise awareness within the general public that meningitis is circulating, symptoms can present and they shouldn’t be disregarded.
“Sometimes it follows the flu season or can accompany the flu season and we are now coming into the flu season as well and that might be another reason why it’s increasing. The flu can decrease some people’s immune system and it may make them more susceptible.”
Dr Cotter added that there had been a recent fall off in the uptake of these vaccines compared to others.
She added: “There has been a fall-off, for reasons we don’t quite understand. Maybe people thought the children got the vaccines or they didn’t go for their last visit, the 13-month visit.
“Now that meninogococcal disease is on the rise, parents should review their children’s vaccination records and make sure they have gotten all their vaccines.”
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People of all age groups are susceptible to the disease and two different strain types were noted in the three casualties.
Meningitis – a serious illness involving inflammation of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord – can be caused by a variety of germs, mainly bacterial.
The spread of meningococcal from person to person is very unusual, especially outside of close household contact.