Twenty children attending the State's largest children's hospital have tested positive for an antibiotic-resistent "superbug" in recent weeks.
The bug was picked up in patients at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, which said yesterday that none of the 20 children were ill with vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) at present.
The bug entered the bloodstream of three children and they were successfully treated. It was found in the stools of 17 other children and it was expected they would get rid of the bug over time without treatment, Prof Owen Smyth, a consultant paediatric haematologist at the hospital said.
The hospital has imposed visiting restriction on one ward, St John's, where cancer patients are treated. The bug was detected in that ward.
Most of the 20 children affected are outpatients.
"No new positive tests have happened within the last three weeks," the hospital said.
"Patients and guardians have been informed that all patients booked for an outpatient appointment or admission or any other procedure should attend as normal," it added.
Prof Smyth said the outbreak was taken very seriously. "Crumlin is the national centre for children's blood disorders and cancer and we share care with 16 other centres around the country ... our current outbreak was brought in by a child from one of our shared care centres."
The VRE was picked up during regular surveillance but had not caused specific problems for the children in which it was detected, he added.
A VRE outbreak at St James's Hospital, Dublin, in 2001 resulted in it closing its bone-marrow transplant unit for several months. During this period, it had to send patients abroad for transplants.