TB vaccine would have cost just €16K

A TUBERCULOSIS vaccine routinely given to newborns, with the exception of babies born in Cork, would have cost the Government little more than €16,500 when the Southern Health Board (SHB) sought funding in 2001.

The request for funding for the vaccine, known as the BCG, was twice turned down by the Department of Health between 2001 and 2003, when the SHB submitted revised costings.

Cork, the only county in which the vaccine is not routinely given to newborns, has since witnessed the largest single outbreak of the disease in living memory. Between March and May of this year, 21 people were diagnosed with TB at two Cork creches, including three adults and 18 children.

When the SHB — now part of the Health Service Executive (HSE) South — made its original application for funding in 2001, the vaccine itself was costed at IR£13,000 (€16,510). The cost of administering the vaccine, was less than €1 million.

The SHB submitted a detailed, fully costed proposal, for the implementation of a BCG vaccination programme in 2001, which has been seen by the Irish Examiner. It proposed to fund neonatal BCG vaccination teams at a total cost of €325,755 and school BCG vaccination teams at a total cost of €509,270. Capital costs were €95,250. Of the total cost of €930,275, the bulk, €716,280, would have gone on salaries.

Detailed staffing proposals included funding for two neonatal teams attached to the chest clinic at St Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork city, involving six staff, as well as a reduced team in Kerry.

It said a “catch-up” programme would be delivered in outreach clinics. A schools programme for 10 to 13-year-olds was also to be undertaken, by teams already in place to administer the Meningoccocal C vaccine against meningitis.

“A request has been submitted to the Department of Health for the retention of the Men C teams as generic teams,” the SHB draft proposal said.

The public health team that made the request for funding in 2001 proposed that the neonatal programme start from October 2001 and the schools programme from March 2002.

Among its members was Dr Margaret O’Sullivan, specialist in public health medicine, and central to controlling the recent Cork outbreak of TB. She criticised the exclusion of Cork from national HSE policy, which states the vaccine should be routinely offered to newborns.

Yesterday a spokesperson for the HSE South said parents of newborns at Cork University Maternity Hospital will be given the option of having their child vaccinated against TB from next October, six years after the request for funding was made. Funding of up to €1.5 million is in place, she said.