THE Minister for Health is to set up a panel of experts to examine the increase in the number of cases of meningitis.
There were 375 cases of bacterial meningitis reported in the Republic in 1995, an increase on previous years. Thirteen people died from the disease in the first six months of last year, according to the Central Statistics Office.
Mr Noonan said yesterday he wanted the panel to assess the situation. "People in modern society don't believe that there is a thing that can strike you down within 48 hours", he added. He urged parents to get their children vaccinated against the disease, a service provided without charge by GPs.
A spokesman for the Department of Health told The Irish Times that the panel would be looking at a number of areas, such as the number who contracted the disease, the diagnosis involved, surveillance and preventive measures and will make recommendations to the Minister as soon as possible.
The Mater Hospital, Dublin, said yesterday that Ms Gillian Brennan (20), from Ennis, Co Clare, a Montessori teacher, who died on Wednesday, did not die from meningitis. A press statement said a post mortem had revealed that she died from "acute, rapidly progressive and fulminating meningococcal septicemia, complicated by bilateral adrenal infarction with consequent circulatory collapse. There was no evidence of meningitis."
Mark Elwood (14) who died from suspected meningitis in Bangor, Co Down, was admitted to the Ulster Hospital on Wednesday with a sore throat. A child in west Belfast is being treated for the disease.
There is an average of 50 cases of the disease in the North every year.