AN Atherton toddler desperately ill with meningococcal disease was fighting for his life in Cairns Base Hospital last night with his frightened parents by his side.

The boy, aged three and a half, was in a critical condition attached to a ventilator in the Intensive Care Unit after developing a high fever and the tell-tale bruise-like rash of the deadly blood poisoning condition about midday on Monday.

"He is critically ill - it's step by step at this stage," Tropical Population Health Network medical director Jeffrey Hanna said yesterday.

The youngster became very sick, very fast on Monday.

Dr Hanna said he was "a well boy" on Sunday then upon waking on Monday was "a bit off, nothing too drastic" before rapidly deteriorating and needing to be urgently transferred by helicopter from Atherton Hospital to Cairns Base later that afternoon.

Health network staff yesterday visited Atherton's First Steps Early Childhood Learning Centre, which the boy attends, to talk to concerned parents and provide short courses of antibiotics to about 12 children in his immediate group.

A woman picking up her two grandchildren from the Steven St centre yesterday afternoon, who did not want to be named, was full of praise for the way staff had responded to the incident.

"It's good having them (the children) coming to a place like this because you know that it is going to be handled correctly," she said.

Although Dr Hanna stressed meningococcal septicemia was rare - with only 15-20 cases recorded in the area from Mackay north each year - the bacteria was quite a commonly-carried organism.

"It's carried in the back of the nose and throat and about 10 per cent of the population is carrying it at any one time," he said.

In this case, the carrier was most likely somebody within the child's immediate household - his parents or two siblings - or the children or staff at the childcare centre he frequented rather than any casual contact, Dr Hanna said.

Staff at the centre yesterday referred all comments to Queensland Health.

Also yesterday, two more cases were confirmed in Cairns' first measles outbreak in 11 years.

A 17-month-old boy and a woman, 33, both from the Cairns area, have been diagnosed with the highly contagious disease taking the toll to eight after six people fell ill last month.

The other cases involved four unvaccinated school students from Cairns and Kuranda and two men working at a mine about four hours west of Cairns.

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