Britain will have the first healthcare system in the world to supply a new vaccine against meningitis C when a mass immunisation programme starts in early October, the Health Secretary, Mr Frank Dobson, announced yesterday.
Group C meningococcal infection accounts for about 40 per cent of meningitis cases in Britain each year, and in the past few years the number of cases in this group has risen significantly. In 1998 an estimated 1,530 people contracted the infection and 150 people died in England and Wales as a result, mainly in outbreaks at colleges and schools where the risk of spreading the infection can be extremely high, especially during the winter months.
One outbreak of the infection in Pontypridd, south Wales, last year claimed the lives of three people, and 3,000 adults and children at four schools were vaccinated.
The other strain of meningitis is Group B, which accounts for 60 per cent of cases, which are usually isolated. There is no vaccination for meningitis B, but research is continuing in this area.
Dr Declan McKeown, a specialist in public health medicine for the Western Health Board, said doctors and paediatricians would be following the vaccination programme in Britain very closely to assess its potential benefits for patients in Ireland: "There has been an overall increase in meningitis in Ireland and a proportionally greater percentage increase in meningitis C, but any move to introduce such a vaccine would probably come centrally through the Department of Health's working group on bacterial meningitis."
In the first stages of the immunisation programme and due to the limited supplies of the new vaccine - which will all but replace an older version whose benefits last only three years - the vaccine will only be made available to the highest-risk groups such as babies and teenagers.
But the British Department of Health said yesterday that, if the vaccination programme proceeded according to plan, up to 15 million children and babies would be vaccinated against the infection in the first year alone, with the programme expanding to all age groups as stocks of the vaccine increased. In the short term the vaccination programme is intended to halve the figure of 150 deaths.
Announcing the new vaccination programme in the House of Commons, Mr Dobson said meningitis was an infection that all parents dreaded. "Meningitis fills parents with fear because it can arrive out of the blue and bring a healthy child to death's door in a few hours. This brand new vaccine will help reduce the incidence of meningitis but it won't bring it to an end."
The first groups to receive the new vaccine will be:
Babies when they receive routine diphtheria/tetanus/whooping cough, polio and Hib (a strain of meningitis) vaccinations at two, three and four months.
children receiving their first measles, mumps and rubella vaccination at about 13 months.
children over four months and less than one year who will be recalled for immunisation.
young people aged 15-17.
The British Department of Health said yesterday children between one and five years old will be immunised in the second phase of the programme, possibly early next year, as more supplies of the vaccine become available.
The Meningitis Research Foundation welcomed the introduction of the new vaccine. "This will undoubtedly save lives and the right groups are being targeted," a spokeswoman said.