One-third of the population will be vaccinated against meningitis C in a campaign beginning this summer, the Minister for Health and Children has announced.
Mr Martin also warned that the country was vulnerable to an epidemic of measles because some parents had not had their children immunised. This was due to "scares" which had no foundation, he said.
He was speaking at the announcement by the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland of immunisation guidelines.
The meningitis vaccination campaign will offer protection against the strain which accounts for about 40 per cent of the disease in Ireland, the Minister said.
The vaccine will be incorporated into the childhood vaccination programme and will be given to older children and young people in a "catch-up" programme.
"This will be a major undertaking, eventually involving the vaccine being administered to about a third of the population," he said.
Ireland has the highest incidence of meningitis in Europe. The vaccine will offer prolonged protection against bacterial meningitis C which, with meningitis B, comprises the most dangerous forms of the disease.
There is no vaccine against meningitis B, the most common bacterial meningitis.
The new vaccine is already in use in other countries, but its introduction has been held up here to allow for its licensing by the Irish Medicines Board.
The Minister issued a stark warning about the increase in measles and the relatively low level of immunisation.
According to the RCPI's Immunisation Guidelines, the introduction of a measles vaccine in 1985 led to a dramatic reduction in the number of cases, from almost 10,000 in that year to just 201 cases in 1987.
However, in 1993, the number had risen to more than 4,000.
"Incomplete vaccine coverage together with a pool of susceptible unvaccinated older children resulted in rapid spread of the infection," the guidelines said.
"The current level of immunisation uptake, especially of the MMR [measles, mumps and rubella] vaccine, leaves us vulnerable to an epidemic," the Minister said yesterday.
"There are indications that the incidence of measles is on the increase at present, with a sharp rise in the number of cases notified to the Eastern Health Board in the first weeks of 2000. This underlines the importance of making sure that the child population is immunised against measles and other potentially serious illnesses.
"Some parents' confidence in the safety of vaccines has been undermined by a number of scares, whereby it has been alleged that certain conditions are linked to the receipt of childhood vaccines," Mr Martin said.
"Claims have been made which, when subject to peer review or further research, have not been borne out.
"While vaccine scares make good headlines, stories of individuals affected by the long-term effects of diseases such as polio, measles, whooping cough and rubella rarely achieve similar prominence," he said.
"The consequences of having a sizeable group of unimmunised children may be serious, as has been seen recently in the Netherlands, where an outbreak of measles resulted in the deaths of three children and the hospitalisation of others."
Email: pomorain@irish-times.ie