Hospital Campaigns Commit to National Day of Action on A&E Overcrowding on January 21st.
Hospital Campaigns Commit to National Day of Action on A&E Overcrowding on January 21st.
Last night cathaoirleach of the Save Navan Hospital Campaign Peadar Tóibín TD chaired a meeting of the National Hospitals Campaign which seeks to mobilize people across the island to demand an end to capacity cuts in the Health Service. He stated;
"Last night representatives from hospital campaigns from Navan, Drogheda, Daily Hill, Newry, Monaghan, Cavan, Causeway Coast, Colraine, Letterkenny, Mayo General, Mullingar and the Midwest met to organize the National Hospitals Campaign Day of Action on January 21st. Hospital Campaigns in Enniskillen, Sligo, Cork, Kerry, Bantry and Wexford are also considering getting involved".
"We believe that we may be reaching a turning point. The HSE has spent the last 15 years closing 8 A&Es and thousands of hospital beds. Primary care and step-down facilities have been allowed to corrode to the point of dysfunction. In the north the former Executive bought into the Bengoa Report. That report is the engine behind the closure of capacity now in hospitals such as Daily Hill, Causeway Coast and Enniskillen. It seeks to implement a policy that has already been proven to be damaging in other jurisdictions. Now is the time for people to get active, to take to the streets and push for a complete review over the direction of travel and seek for reform of the HSE and the Bengoa plan. We are urging citizens to come out in numbers on the 21st of January".
The latest cut by the HSE, the Ambulance bypass of Navan Hospital implemented in Meath just before Christmas is leading to chaos. Patients from Meath are being brought by ambulance to Drogheda. They are being triaged in Drogheda. They are then being sent back to Navan A&E for treatment by ambulance or by taxi. If they are being brought by taxi a medical professional has to accompany them and then that medical professional is traveling back to Drogheda by taxi. What should be a single patient journey to A&E now takes 3 individual journeys. Patients from as far as Dunboyne in Meath are brought to A&E in Mullingar instead of Navan A&E leading to pressure on Mullingar Hospital".
"If you were to design the most inefficient and wasteful pathways for a patient to get to an A&E this would be it. Incredibly a government Minister appeared on television recently pointing to Navan A&E as an example of an A&E that is working well. This just 3 weeks after the HSE latest attempt to close Navan A&E. No one in the HSE is ever held to account for their bureaucratic nightmare.
CRÍOCH
