Ireland is on the verge of an epidemic of viral illness, the Irish Medical Organisation warned last night, as hospitals reported significant increases in admissions. Emergency admissions of acutely ill patients have almost tripled in the last week, putting intense pressure on hospital beds.
Dr Shane O'Neill, consultant respiratory physician at Beaumont Hospital, says he has not seen such a demand for hospital services in more than 10 years.
The Department of Health confirmed that all hospitals were busy, but they were coping with the increased workloads. Meanwhile, all planned admissions at the Beaumont and Mater Hospitals in Dublin have been postponed as staff deal with a trebling of admissions. "In the last few days there is good reason to suspect clinically that we are on the threshold of an epidemic, if we are not already in the midst of one," an IMO spokesman, Dr Cormac McNamara, said.
If such an epidemic is confirmed, he said, it could result in an estimated 100 deaths due to respiratory illness related to flu. The most vulnerable would be the elderly, those with serious chest infections and people whose immune systems were compromised. Doctors are already reporting increased numbers of deaths among the elderly.
The increase in Irish hospital admissions and deaths is being blamed on an outbreak of influenza, although doctors believe there may be a number of viral infections at work.
Britain's chief medical officer, Prof Liam Donaldson, warned yesterday that influenza cases there had reached "epidemic proportions" because the true extent of flu was not reflected in official figures as many people were not attending their doctors.
The Department of Health said results produced by the national virus reference laboratory up to the end of 1999 showed no evidence of an epidemic. However, samples taken last week will be collated today. Technically, flu must hit 400 per 100,000 people to be classified as an epidemic.
"Ireland is normally a little bit behind the UK, and the UK is usually hit by flu slightly before us," according to the director of the Irish College of General Practitioners' flu clinical trial and surveillance unit, Dr Dermot Nolan.
Epidemics are assessed using either clinical diagnoses or laboratory results of swab samples. But there was no countrywide surveillance programme operating in the Republic, he said.
However, a clinical trial for a new anti-flu drug involving 40 GP practices in Dublin and Wicklow found that doctors had been extremely busy over the Christmas period treating flu and flu-like illnesses.
Meanwhile, the Blood Transfusion Service Board yesterday appealed to healthy adults who were not suffering from colds or flu to donate blood during the coming week.