Professor Mary Horgan:

I will comment as a clinician in infection diseases and who treats adults, and also as a parent. One of the differences between uptakes is that if one gives meningococcal meningitis vaccine to children, everyone understands it. People die immediately of meningitis so for most parents, that is a no-brainer. As a clinician who has seen people die of meningitis, meningococcal disease, up to very recently - the figures have gone way down - I can say that it is a fantastic vaccine. We had one of our final medical students die from meningococcal C, despite all medical efforts about a decade ago, and it brings home to one that it could be one's own 20 year-old dying there. People get the immediate effects of why it is important to give the meningitis vaccine.

What is more challenging for many parents is seeing the benefits of a vaccine in ten or 20 years time. People do not get it when it is about giving a vaccine when someone is 12 or 13 years of age and saying that it will prevent cancer in 15 or 20 years, which Professor Brennan will talk about. When one sees it as a clinician, one gets it.

Professor Brennan will talk about people who get a preventable cancer. If, in the morning, someone told us we have a tablet that would prevent a cancer, people would take it. They would not even think about it. We have vaccines that prevent cancers. We have another one, hepatitis B, which is part of the childhood vaccine, that prevents liver cancer. Liver cancer is one of the major causes of death in south-east Asia, where chronic hepatitis B is very common. People give that to their children. It is a safe, effective vaccine that prevents cancer decades on.

It is trying to get the message across on what is totally effective now, people buy into the vaccine for meningitis, versuswhat is protecting them, say, when they are a grandparent. I am a mother and gave my daughter a vaccine before it was part of the routine vaccine programme. I paid for it myself because, like Professor Butler, I knew the data, I had been at the meetings and I spoke to those who developed it. The initial studies were pulled because the vaccine was so good.

We have people such as Dr. Gilvarry and the HPRA who monitor the effects of all vaccines. Vaccines are good because on a day-to-day basis, I see people coming into hospital, being on ventilators with influenza, getting liver cancer that could be prevented because it is caused by hepatitis B, seeing people with cancer of the cervix, again which can be preventable, it could be any of us or any of our children. When one is on the front line, one has the stories, one sees them. I am sure Professor Brennan will give more insight into this.