{"id":433160,"date":"2026-05-05T09:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T09:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/433160\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T09:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T09:27:09","slug":"free-shingles-vaccination-for-elderly-proposed-by-limerick-councillor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/433160\/","title":{"rendered":"Free shingles vaccination for elderly proposed by Limerick councillor"},"content":{"rendered":"

FINE Gael councillor Peter Doyle has called on Limerick Council to write to the Health Minister requesting the double shingles vaccination be given free to those over 65 years old.<\/p>\n

The cost of the two-dose vaccination service (Shingrix), Cllr Doyle told Council members at the recent Metropolitan District meeting, is \u20ac487 (\u20ac243.50 per vaccination dose) in a pharmacy. He said that he is personally aware of a case where a mature lady got shingles and has now ended up in a nursing home because of the infection.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can also result in blindness for older people who get the shingles. I think this is an important move,\u201d Cllr Doyle commented.<\/p>\n

Cllr Olivia O\u2019Sullivan seconded his motion and pointed out that shingles is also closely linked to dementia.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere is large evidence that shows that shingle vaccine can reduce dementia by 20 per cent in the elderly. A fifth of our population in their elderly years who suffer from dementia could be saved from it,\u201d Cllr O\u2019Sullivan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a vaccine programme for our elderly similar to the vaccine programme we have for our children. We\u2019ll save ourselves so much public money in elderly care if we can start to examine it in a similar way. If we could be protected in the same way in our retirement years, people will love longer and healthier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Social Democrats councillor Shane Hickey-O\u2019Mara also supported the motion, deeming shingles \u201cthe worst thing\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine being 80 or 65 and experiencing that,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FINE Gael councillor Peter Doyle has called on Limerick Council to write to the Health Minister requesting the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[105162,103,61,60,189063,24109,63723],"class_list":["post-433160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-council","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-peter-doyle","tag-shingles","tag-vaccination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433160","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=433160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}