No excuses now - Make BCG mandatory in Cork
Posted on March 22, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Health, Kids.
For some completely bizarre reason, each regional health board can decide whether to give babies a BCG shot or not as standard. Cork (all of Munster?) is the only region not to.
Catherine has just pointed me to a story in The Irish Examiner about a woman with TB who worked in two creches in Cork. They are now going to have to test every child in both of those locations for infection.
Other than saving a few quid in the short term, is there any medical reason not to provide it? How would you feel if your kid got TB because some paper pusher in the health service decided Cork people don’t need protecting? Maybe they’d like us all to return to the days of Seán Ó Riordáin living in a shed in the garden writing poetry? “Mar is poll im cheann gach smaoineamh……and the TB ain’t so hot either mum”.
6 Replies to "No excuses now - Make BCG mandatory in Cork"
conor on March 22, 2007
It turns out that within the Southern region they give BCG in Kerry but not in Cork! WTF?
You can get it in Cork at some Clinic somewhere but how many people will do it if the health authorities don’t think it is worth bothering?
Note the end of the Examiner article about the number of cases in the Southern region increasing. Gosh you don’t say! Takes a real expert in Epidemiology to figure that one out.
maria on March 31, 2007
Just to say that many mothers who give birth in Cork also attend the clinics in Waterford to have their bubs vaccinated.When I went in Dec. I had to return in Jan. as they had run out of vaccine (probably because of all the newly born Corkonians!!)
conor on April 1, 2007
These people can’t even get fundamental supply and demand right? I despair.
aisling on April 7, 2007
my little cousin who attended Nurture creche has been diagnosed with active tb.He has had to endure gastric washouts which involved being held down while a tube was shoved down his nose into his stomach to get an aspirate.This all while he is awake.IT makes me sick that the HSE has failed all of us especially our most precious assets and the creche have a lot to answer for too.I cant wait for the general election.Anyone want to picket the HSE…IM ready to kick ass.
conor on April 7, 2007
I am so angry about that Aisling. I would say “heads should roll” but we all know they won’t. The same jobsworths who make decisions like that and sign-off on idiotic maternity hospital designs will have the same jobs they always had. At this stage I am going to vote for parties I dislike just to try and change the line-up.
Justin Mason on March 22, 2007
Damn right! the luddites with their half-baked autism theories will have people dead by the end of this, otherwise. (drives my biologist wife and I nuts, this one.)