The Minister for Health has moved remarkably quickly to kill off rumours and suppositions about the latest vaccine scare involving the oral polio vaccine.
He told a hushed and crowded news conference in Dublin yesterday that a British blood donor who later developed the brain disease variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) had contributed plasma used in the manufacture of the vaccine. Up to 83,500 doses were distributed in Ireland between January 1989 and January 1999, and it emerged that up to 60,000 were given to children here.
It took Mr Martin about a week to bring this to public attention. He and his advisers needed this time to confirm the initial warning from the UK, assess how many might have been exposed here, calculate the possible health risks and consult Irish and international experts.
The British authorities told the Irish Medicines Board of the risks last Tuesday evening, and it quickly alerted the Department. Mr Martin said he was told on Wednesday and by Friday had convened a meeting with some of the State's top specialists on CJD, vaccination, viruses and blood products.
It was decided at that meeting to bring the information to the public as quickly as possible, Mr Martin said. A plan for how to get the details out to the health boards and general practitioners and how to identify those who might have received the vaccine was worked out over the weekend.
The possible risk to those who had received the vaccine, including 50,000 to 60,000 infants and children, was also quickly assessed. Irish experts did their own calculations and contacted specialists in the US, Edinburgh and Vienna for independent confirmation of their own views.
There were two pressing reasons for this haste. The Minister and his Department were fearful of an uncontrolled and potentially inaccurate partial release of information via the media. A possible BSE risk linked to the polio virus had caught the Department on the hop when it broke in Britain last September, and it wanted no repeat this time.
Much more importantly, it wanted to protect the integrity of its vaccination programmes. All the Department's vaccination campaigns are in trouble because of public fears about vaccine safety. The Minister was straight when asked why, if there was little or no risk of CJD infection, he held a high-level press conference accompanied by no fewer than 15 scientists and officials. "The public has a right to know," he said. He wanted to provide assurance for the parents of children who had received the vaccine. Government Departments don't always do it right when deciding how to get their message out to the public, but in this circumstance the Minister and his Department did just the proper thing. Stone-walling would only have heightened concerns and caused people to suspect a conspiracy of silence.