THE CYSTIC Fibrosis Association of Ireland (CFAI) has claimed the Health Service Executive and the Department of Health turned down offers from the private sector last year to help with providing a special unit for cystic fibrosis patients at Dublin’s St Vincent’s hospital.
The allegation was made a day after Minister for Health Mary Harney told reporters in Dublin the State would have to look at the possibility of getting private sector investment to build the unit.
The unit had been promised for 2010 but the HSE said it would not have resources to commence until 2011 at the earliest.
The CFAI expressed shock at Ms Harney’s comments, saying offers from the private sector had been refused just over a year ago.
“Last year the Department of Health and the HSE were inundated with offers of help from the private sector to build the unit at St Vincent’s after the media campaign in January 2008. This assistance was refused as the HSE/Department of Health confirmed that they would get the facility operational by 2010 through their own budgets,” it said in a statement.
Asked about this, the Department of Health directed queries to the HSE. The HSE said it had not received “any appropriate private development proposals” in relation to the St Vincent’s site. It said treatment of patients with cystic fibrosis remains a key priority, and that the HSE is working closely with St Vincent’s to enhance accommodation for CF sufferers.
The delay with funding for the new unit until 2011 “at the earliest” has outraged the CFAI, which has begun a major campaign to ensure that the promise to provide about 30 single en suite rooms for CF patients by 2010, as part of a new 120-bed block at St Vincent’s, is honoured.
The single rooms are essential to preventing CF patients from picking up infections. CF patients in the Republic have a lower life expectancy than in several other countries, and the CFAI said 25 CF patients died here last year.
Sean O’Kennedy, chairman of the CFAI, said it would make economic sense to start the new unit immediately while construction workers were on welfare and building costs were down. “Surely saving lives and jobs is a win-win for the Government,” he said.
Fine Gael’s health spokesman Dr James Reilly said that if the new unit was not possible in the short term, a modular unit offering some extra isolation facilities must be put in place.
Labour health spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan criticised Ms Harney for suggesting private funding might be found for the unit: “The public health service is not the responsibility of the private sector. If Minister Harney insists on peddling this defunct PD ideology at the expense of people’s lives, then she should go.”
Sinn Féin health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the Minister’s suggestion added insult to injury: “This is a recipe for further delay and is the Minister’s knee-jerk response to every problem in the health service.”