A hunt is underway to find passengers who travelled on the same bus as a Westmeath man who died after contracting measles.
The man in his late 40s died in hospital after a recent trip to England.
A HSE Measles National Incident Management Team had already been established in response to a recent rise in measles cases in Europe - particularly Romania, France and Austria and the UK.
Irish Times journalist Ronan McGreevy told The Pat Kenny Show the man took a bus from Dublin.
"It's a bus from Dublin to Mullingar; this is where the man unfortunately passed away," he said.
"They particularly want to trace eight people who were in close proximity to him on that bus."
A person's chest with the small red-brown spots of a measles rash. Source: HSEMr McGreevy said there is a new push around vaccines.
"There has been a warning from the Chief Medical Officer Breda Smyth about getting vaccinated if you're not vaccinated already," he said.
"Measles outbreaks were very common in Ireland right up until the 1990s and [then] they vanished really from the public conscience.
"As a result of the discredited British doctor Andrew Wakefield, instances of vaccination started to fall off in the mid-2000s.
"Now, a lot of young people - particularly young men - are not vaccinated.
[Ms Smyth] has urged people who have not been vaccinated to get vaccinated, and the HSE is going to make a public announcement to that effect," he added.
The symptoms of measles include:
- Cold-like symptoms such as aches and pains, a runny nose, sneezing and a cough
- Sore red eyes that may be sensitive to light
- A temperature of 38 degrees Celsius or above, which may reach around 40 degrees Celsius
- Small greyish-white spots in your mouth
- Loss of appetite
- Tiredness, irritability and a general lack of energy
- Rash, which usually appears on head and neck first and spreads to rest of body
The HSE offers an MMR vaccine to protect against measles to all children; an MMR catch up option is also available for children aged 10 and under who may have missed out on vaccination.
The Irish case follows a World Health Organisation (WHO) warning of an 'alarming' rise in cases across Europe.
There were 42,200 measles cases across 41 member states in the WHO European region in 2023, the WHO said, up from 941 cases reported in all of 2022.
In England, 170 cases were diagnosed between last December and mid-January.
The UK's Health Security Agency declared a national incident over the rising number of cases last month.
