Olivia Kelleher
Newstalk presenter Claire Byrne has revealed that she was given the last rites after she contracted bacterial meningitis at the age of fourteen.
In an interview with Newstalk Breakfast, Byrne said that the significant outbreak of meningitis in Kent in the UK, which has caused the death of two people, has brought back memories for her and her family.
“When I think back (on the experience) I was so out of it. I was so unwell that it is the experience that my parents had, particularly more so than the experience I had (that she considers). It was dreadful for them.”
The native of Mountrath, Co Laois, had whooping cough in the lead up to Christmas 1989. Byrne said that her “immune system was kind of shot.”
She recalls feeling extremely unwell in school one day in January 1990. She had an “intense,…