THE Department of Health is considering a national disease surveillance system linked to the all Ireland Institute of Public Health recently agreed between Health Ministers in North and South. It would monitor infectious diseases such as meningitis.
Mr Noonan and Mr Malcolm Moss agreed to set up the institute at a meeting last month. Work on it will begin later this year and it is expected to be fully operational next year. It will concentrate on disease surveillance, research, education and training, and providing advice on public health.
The establishment of such a system was proposed in a recent report on the future of public health prepared for the Department.
However, Dr Brian O'Herlihy, director of public health in the Eastern Health Board, said that while such a system would be useful and helpful, it would not make much difference to the reporting of meningitis. He told The Irish Times that meningitis reporting in the boards area was now as accurate as it could be.
Responding to a claim in the Sunday Independent that cases were under reported by up to 50 per cent, he said that this had been the situation in the 1980s because not all hospitals were reporting cases to the EHB. This compared with about 40 per cent under reporting in other countries.
However, the records for 1991 showed a significant improve meat, with 80 per cent reporting of suspected cases of the disease. Following an upsurge in cases last year the EHB identified one or two hospitals still under reporting incidences. These were followed up, and he was now confident that the 1995 figures were as accurate as they could be.
While Dr O'Herlihy is responsible only for the Eastern Health Board, he said that he had been in touch with two other health boards yesterday and they also felt that their reporting was now accurate.
Asked whether the rise in reported cases of meningitis over the past decade reflected a real increase, or just an increase in reporting, he replied that it was a bit of both. "About half the increase is due to under reporting and the rest is a real increase," he said. He stressed that the incidence of the disease was still low.
"There are 1.2 million people in the EHB area, and we had 153 cases of suspected meningitis last year, he said.
The EHB had distributed information leaflets on the disease to health centres, libraries and pharmacies, and these were freely available, he added.