A mother whose newborn baby spent six weeks in hospital with RSV has called on the Government to continue supporting vaccination against the virus.<\/p>\n
A pilot vaccination programme will be repeated this winter for the third year, the HSE said on Monday. Then it is up to Jennifer Carroll MacNeill to decide on future plans.<\/p>\n
Ciara Farrell\u2019s daughter Daisy was admitted to CHI at Temple Street aged just over five weeks old in 2023.<\/p>\n
Ms Farrell said: \u201cWhen we were in with Daisy, the ward was like pandemonium. It was full of very, very ill newborns, two-week-old babies.<\/p>\n
\n It was traumatic for the babies, traumatic for the parents and if that can be avoided due to a cost the government has to incur, why wouldn\u2019t they just save all that pain?\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
The impact continued after they returned home to Louth.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour child\u2019s been tube-fed for six weeks so she doesn\u2019t know how to use a bottle or breast-feed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt goes into nearly a year of re-training your child, I wouldn\u2019t wish it on anybody.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She is pregnant with their third child and relieved the vaccine programme remains for now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I think it’s the best thing ever that vaccine, because of what happened to us,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At Children\u2019s Health Ireland, clinical director and paediatric emergency medicine consultant, Turlough Bolger, saw \u201ca massive improvement\u201d after the pilot began in 2024. CHI runs the only paediatric intensive care units (PICU) in Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt leads to a 50% reduction in attendance in the intensive care unit and also a shorter length of stay in the intensive care unit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo overall between those two things you are seeing a massive reduction in PICU days of children with RSV.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cit\u2019s almost impossible to avoid RSV, and it\u2019s very infectious\u201d.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged Hiqa weighed these costs against vaccine prices. \u201cThat\u2019s a commercial negotiation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the most important thing is we look at the clinical effectiveness. And look at these children being transferred up from Cork, Galway or Donegal with severe bronchiolitis and RSV infection, and the trauma and the danger of having to drive all that distance up to an ICU bed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Funding decisions, however, are not made in isolation, according to health economist and MSc in Health Economics, University of Galway programme director, Ronan Mahon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe HSE is faced with very difficult and ultimately unavoidable decisions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a finitely-resourced healthcare system, every euro spent on a new intervention is a euro that cannot be spent on other healthcare so the HSE have to choose what to fund and what not to fund to try to achieve the most health gain possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In general there may be a chance to negotiate “a more reasonable price” so all patients benefit, he noted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hiqa estimated immunisation could be cost-effective if the HSE can negotiate lower prices. It found over five years options could cost \u20ac15.6m to \u20ac58.5m at current prices.<\/p>\n
The Department of Health also said the pilot continues this winter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It will work with Hiqa and the HSE “to consider the findings and options set out in the assessment, including operational and budget impacts”.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mother whose newborn baby spent six weeks in hospital with RSV has called on the Government to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[11246,103,61,60,10727],"class_list":["post-422051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-childrens-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-vaccine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}