POET RITA Ann Higgins has called on Minister for Health Mary Harney to address the “fundamental inhumanity” of an overcrowded public hospital service in Galway.
"There is something putrid in a health system that affords people so little dignity, and where staff are working constantly under serious pressure," Ms Higgins told The Irish Timesyesterday.
She was commenting on the experience of her husband, Christy, who is undergoing chemotherapy. He became ill this week and had to wait 17 hours for a bed in University College Hospital Galway (UCHG). “We were told that if Christy became ill at all, he should come straight into hospital – but there appear to be no dedicated beds in oncology for patients in this situation, who must take their turn in casualty,” she said.
Ms Higgins emphasised that hospital staff were “terrific” but “it was dangerous, overcrowded, and Christy only had a curtain separating him – and I heard nurses talking about someone with chicken pox. My heart goes out to other people who were also waiting in there.”
HSE West said the UCHG emergency department was one of the busiest in the State with an average 183 patients daily and 60,614 attendances last year. This past few days had been “particularly busy” with 207 attendances in a single 24-hour period.
Galway University Hospitals – comprising UHG in the city and Merlin Park Hospital on the eastern outskirts – were instructed to make cutbacks of €15 million this year, from €288 million to €273 million.
In a leaked memo last month, Galway University Hospitals manager Bridget Howley warned that cutbacks would have “a devastating impact on our ability to deliver cancer services” in accordance with the national cancer strategy.