Eoin Ryan
Question:30 Mr. E. Ryan asked the Minister for Health the reason a national surveillance centre to monitor and report on serious contagious diseases such as meningitis has been postponed until 1998. [8124/97]
Written Answers. - National Surveillance Centre.
Limerick East): I have accepted the need for a national communicable disease surveillance unit to provide a comprehensive broad based approach to the prevention of disease. The Department of Health is currently considering the organisational and structural issues involved in conjunction with the relevant agencies and professional interests. In deciding on the organisational and structural issues involved, however, it will be essential to take account of developments in relation to a number of other bodies, all of which will have to have linkages of one type or another with the unit, and all of which are in either a development stage or a review stage at present. These bodies include the Institute of Public Health, the Office for Health Gain, the Food Safety Board and the Virus Reference Laboratory. The intention therefore is to work on the detailed arrangements for the unit, in conjunction with the ongoing work on these bodies during the coming year, with a view to its establishment in 1998.
I must, however, point out that health boards are statutorily responsible for the control and prevention of infectious diseases and they will continue to carry out this function when the national communicable disease surveillance unit has been established. Serious infectious diseases such as meningitis are reported to and monitored by the health boards at regional level and the Department of Health at national level.