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GPs advise parents that infants 6-11 months should receive extra MMR vaccine if travelling abroad

Measles cases have skyrocketed in Europe over the last year.

FAMILY DOCTORS ARE advising parents that young infants eligible for the MMR vaccine should receive an additional dose before travelling abroad as the contagious illness spikes across Europe.

The Irish College of GPs, the representative organisation in education and standards in general practice, has recommended that infants between six and 11 months should receive an addition MMR vaccine at least two weeks before travelling overseas.

A statement issued by the professional body this morning is reminding the public that measles “is a potentially serious and highly infectious disease and is preventable through vaccination”.

Dr Scott Walkin, the College’s Clinical Lead for Infection Control, has outlined that measles is spreading rapidly in Europe.

“Getting the MMR vaccine is the best way to prevent cases of measles. It is a highly contagious disease. It is easily passed from person to person, where large number of people congregate, including airports, buses, trains and ferries,” Dr Walkin said.

“People at greatest risk of becoming ill with measles include infants and people who are not fully vaccinated with the MMR vaccine,” he said.

“Young babies are at particular risk of complications. Overseas travel presents a high risk of developing measles for unvaccinated children. It can be a severe illness which requires hospitalisation in about one in five cases. Vaccination is safe, effective and it’s essential for community immunity.”

There have been at least 47 cases of measles confirmed in Ireland so far in 2024.

In Europe, the incidence of measles has skyrocketed over the last year.

56,634 measles cases and four deaths have been officially reported across 45 out of 53 countries in the World Health Organisation’s European Region during the first three months of 2024 alone.

In 2023, there were 61,070 cases and 13 deaths reported by 41 countries in the European region.

Nearly half of the reported cases in 2023 were in children under the age of five, which the WHO has said reflects “an accumulation of children who missed routine vaccinations against measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases during the Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with slow recovery in vaccination coverage in 2021 and 2022″.

A measles infection tends to start with cold-like symptoms that develop about 10 days after a person is infected, followed a few days later by a rash. Symptoms include:

  • Cold-like symptoms (eg runny nose, sneezing, coughing)
  • Sore, red eyes
  • A temperature of 38 degrees Celsius or above
  • A rash, which usually appear on the head and neck before spreading to the rest of the body

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29 Comments
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    Mute John Sheahan
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:38 PM

    In fairness I very rarely have issues with Vodafone broadband.

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    Mute Mandy Seiler
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:40 PM

    @John Sheahan: me either. Had a short outage in County Wex earlier. It’s back now.

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    Mute Santa
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    Nov 27th 2020, 10:14 PM

    Vodafone are brilliant. 1 minor issue and the big spoilt boys and girls have a melt down because they can’t watch the toyshow. FFS, if that’s your biggest issue then life ain’t 1/2 bad.

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    Mute Daire Hanrahan
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    Nov 27th 2020, 10:29 PM

    @Santa: totally agree, very rarely are there any issues with their service

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    Mute Bramer
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    Nov 28th 2020, 2:55 AM

    @Santa: Minor issue? I was an hour on h old waiting for customer service during which my 2 kids were asking every 5 minutes when will the WiFi be back. I was a Virgin media customer and never had these problems.

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    Mute Martin Woods
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    Nov 28th 2020, 5:15 AM

    @Bramer: what a life and death situation you were in I hope things worked out for you with this serious first world problem

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    Mute Santa
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    Nov 28th 2020, 12:47 PM

    @Bramer: yes its minor and the more people who ring them the longer their response times.

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    Mute tottkingham
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    Nov 27th 2020, 10:01 PM

    Just don’t bother with the RTE player. Awful app but the adds play perfectly.

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    Mute De Green Parrot
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    Nov 27th 2020, 11:42 PM

    @tottkingham: vpn mate. No ads. Works beautifully along with bbc iPlayer all 4 and itv, netflix most radio players to on your phone.
    Do yourself a favor. Vpn.

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    Mute TheDublinGirly
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    Nov 28th 2020, 7:36 AM

    @De Green Parrot: which vpn app do you use?

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    Mute Danny Nash
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    Nov 28th 2020, 4:24 PM

    @tottkingham: or use brave. Best out of the box ad blocking browser.

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    Mute Johnny Casey
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:43 PM

    Absolutely shocking service from Vodafone tonight. But to be honest very poor service from them in general recently. After 20 years I’m Seriously considering whether or not to continue with this crowd of changers

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    Mute Mary OGorman McGuire
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:44 PM

    @Johnny Casey: I think one outage or issue in 20 years is fairly good service, no?

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    Mute rolyat ecnal
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:49 PM

    @Johnny Casey: are you having a meltdown because you’re going to miss late late toy show

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    Mute Aileen Byrne
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    Nov 27th 2020, 10:04 PM

    @Mary OGorman McGuire: I spent three weeks without my broadband. They sent an engineer to check the outside line TWICE in a week to check the outside line and the line into the house. Booth times he told them lines were fine, faulty modem. Took my parent modem (as I needed it for work) which worked perfectly, then spent another 6weeks arguing to get a new modem sent. I wouldn’t call that great!! My modem was 5 yrs old. Hardly required about 50 phone calls and paying an engineer for two visits (who looked completely baffled on his second visit)

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    Mute Aidan Finn
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    Nov 27th 2020, 10:21 PM

    @Johnny Casey: yeah, frequent outages here recently too, affecting my ability to work.

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    Mute Daire Hanrahan
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    Nov 27th 2020, 10:27 PM

    @Johnny Casey: with them 20 plus years, to be fair these situations don’t happen very often with Vodafone and I live in an area with no broadband only Wi-Fi

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    Mute De Green Parrot
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    Nov 27th 2020, 11:42 PM

    @Johnny Casey: get on digiweb. Vodafone is a joke.

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    Mute Predator
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    Nov 28th 2020, 10:24 AM

    @De Green Parrot: Dodgyweb are rubbish, those Fritzbox routers are a joke along with their support, logged a business support call and still waiting for a response. Its far longer now than the 72 hours they claim and they have ignored subsequent update requests.

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    Mute andrew
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:50 PM

    Its back working so they did their job much thanks.

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    Mute Football in the Groin
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    Nov 27th 2020, 10:52 PM

    With them 4 years, this is the first issue I’ve had with them, siht happens though doesn’t it? Some serious First World Problem people on the Vodafone Twitter account today! It’s grand now again anyway.

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    Mute Limited Edition
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:45 PM

    If you’re able to, change your DNS settings in your router to something like Google’s: 8.8.8.8 for primary and 8.8.1.1 for secondary. If you don’t know how to do this then wait for Vodafone to resolve the issue I guess. This fixed it for me though.

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    Mute John Kinsella
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:54 PM

    @Limited Edition: I changed to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

    Works fine…. Though connections slightly slower.

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    Mute Frank Flanagan
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    Nov 28th 2020, 12:53 AM

    Did anyone actually read the 2nd last sentence? Lol

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    Mute D Mems
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    Nov 28th 2020, 8:21 AM

    @Frank Flanagan: wait until you read the 23rd, it’s a doozy

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    Mute Joe Fo Sho
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    Nov 27th 2020, 11:02 PM

    I’m with them over 20 years and outages happen but very rarely!

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    Mute peig nicathmhaoil
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    Nov 27th 2020, 10:44 PM

    Now it makes sense! In fairness generally super service from Vodafone!

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    Mute brian breslin
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:44 PM

    Well mine keeps dropping every hour during work so it’s not the best but at least it has very few outages.

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    Mute яα¢нєℓ
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    Nov 27th 2020, 11:47 PM

    We were out for a couple of hours, but in fairness this is 1st time having a problem

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    Mute John Murray
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    Nov 27th 2020, 11:58 PM

    @яα¢нєℓ: 5 yrs using Vodafone TV & Internet. three outages, one pre-notification email sent for 6 hr outage (was back in 4 ) 3 years ago. One this Tues for 1hr and the longer one today. Generally very good service, have used in 2 households (we carried our service over/ seamless transfer)

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    Mute Flynn.
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:49 PM

    Change your DNS server to 8.8.8.8 on your device, that will fix it until Vodafone resolve it. Don’t forget to set back to auto after Vodafone fix it.

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    Mute Lee Galiezitte
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    Nov 27th 2020, 10:46 PM

    They had a deadline and hit it so fair play. Would have been a disaster otherwise. I’m with VM and I was without internet for about 5 days recently and I work from home. No other option where I’m living.

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    Mute Laura Halpenny
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    Nov 27th 2020, 11:34 PM

    I had vodafone gigabit broadband installed yesterday, only started the contract today so I was thinking crap, I shouldn’t have changed providers. I read through the instructions and, I guess as well as the outage today, the guy that installed the fibre used the wrong cable from the router to the modem. Great first impression.

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    Mute De Green Parrot
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    Nov 27th 2020, 11:46 PM

    @Laura Halpenny: I just got rid of vodafone gigabit. Every night between 7-11 The speed dropped to 10mb from 1000. Foght my way out of the contract only with them for 2 months. Anyway. With digiweb now. All good. But never again will I go near vodafone. Weeks of telling them the same story and they keep telling me it’s on my end.

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    Mute John Murray
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    Nov 27th 2020, 11:51 PM

    @Laura Halpenny: The gigabit service is SIRO. the modem is installed at wall at entry to the fibre cable and has a separate power cable that plugs in to closest socket. Its a standard LAN cable connecting that to the router. Amazing they messed that up

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    Mute PeoplesFrontOfJudea
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    Nov 28th 2020, 2:52 AM

    @De Green Parrot: Are you an ad for digiweb?

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    Mute Laura Halpenny
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    Nov 28th 2020, 9:05 AM

    @John Murray: hi john…I looked at the instructions after and for the gigabit one you have to install the WAN cable from the LAN port on the router – he should’ve read the instructions- I did lol

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    Mute Colm Molloy
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    Nov 28th 2020, 9:54 AM

    I received a call from Vodafone customer service yesterday to send me out a brand new Huawei P40 pro, they just wanted me to call out my IBAN number to them over the phone before they could send it on to me..
    They sent me a text while talking to verify its them…what does anyone think of this ?

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    Mute Richard Russell
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    Nov 28th 2020, 10:13 AM

    I don’t have sky so while internet down stuck with rte

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    Mute Tom
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    Nov 28th 2020, 7:10 PM

    Ppl still use Vodafone?
    Seriously, why?

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    Mute Brian Power
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    Nov 27th 2020, 9:56 PM

    Can’t complain about Vodafone never had problem before tonight.

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