The National Immunisation Advisory Committee will shortly recommend that all children in the State get another vaccination so that they are routinely protected against pneumococcal disease.
The committee, which has been deliberating on the issue for some time, is understood to have come down in favour of adding the additional vaccine to the childhood immunisation schedule for all children under two years. Its decision is expected to be announced in the coming weeks and its implementation will be a matter for the Health Service Executive and the Department of Health.
Pneumococcal disease includes life-threatening infections such as meningitis, septicaemia and pneumonia and there are hundreds of cases of the disease occurring in the Republic every year, with the very young and old most at risk.
A study published in 2004 indicated up to 132 lives could be saved annually if the Government incorporated a vaccination against pneumococcal disease as part of the childhood immunisation programme.
News of the immunisation advisory committee's imminent decision emerged yesterday at a meeting in Dublin where a number of doctors called again for the introduction of the vaccine for all Irish children as soon as possible.
The vaccine was recently introduced for all children in Britain and Northern Ireland and is also part of routine childhood immunisation schemes in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, France, Spain, the US, Canada and Australia.
Dr Monica Farley, professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, told the meeting that children in the US have been routinely immunised against pneumococcal disease for the past six years and it had led to a more than 90 per cent reduction in the incidence of serious invasive infections in children under the age of five.
It also led to a reduction in cases in all other age groups as a result of the chain of transmission being broken.
And, she said, it had resulted in a reduction in the number of cases of pneumococcal disease which were resistant to antibiotics.
Dr Farley said the Irish authorities should give serious consideration to the introduction of the vaccine for all children in the Republic.
Meanwhile, Dr Peter Finnegan, a public health specialist with the HSE in the northeast, said pneumococcal disease was the most common vaccine-preventable disease in the Republic.
The vaccine against it was offered only to "at-risk" groups in the State at present, such as those with immune deficiency, diabetes and heart conditions.
However, not all children in the at-risk category were getting it, which was another reason why it should be introduced for all, he said.
In addition, he said, up to 19 per cent of pneumococcal disease in the State was now resistant to antibiotics which was higher than in other European countries such as Norway where the rate of resistance was just 3 per cent.
He said that in Border areas there was now confusion as some children were getting the vaccine across the Border in Northern Ireland and some were not.
"Hopefully we will follow our neighbours in the UK and make this a routine vaccine very shortly," he said.