THE RECALL of contaminated batches of Meningitis C vaccine from the UK market does not pose a risk to children in the Republic, the Irish Medicines Board (IMB) has said.
About 20,000 doses of Menjugate Kit, a meningitis C vaccine made by Novartis, have been withdrawn in Britain after it emerged that batches may have been contaminated with the staphylococcus aureus bacterium.
A spokeswoman for the Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency in the UK said the recall was “purely a precautionary measure”. The vaccine is manufactured in Italy and it is thought the contamination involved a solvent used to dilute the vaccine.
“Units from the two affected batches of Menjugate Kit (235012A and 236011), which were first distributed in the UK in January 2009, have not been distributed on the Irish market. In addition, the affected solvent batch (088902) has not been included in any packs of Menjugate Kit marketed in Ireland,” the IMB said.
The vaccine is active against the bug Neisseria meningitidis Group C, a historically significant cause of meningitis and septicaemia in Ireland. However, following the introduction of the jab to the national childhood immunisation programme in 2000, the number of people developing this form of meningitis has dropped from 139 in 2000 to just 4 in 2006.