The number of children diagnosed with cancer who are entered into clinical trials - which improves patient outcomes - has dropped dramatically as a result of increased bureaucracy, a leading cancer specialist said yesterday.
Dr Fin Breathnach, a consultant paediatric oncologist at Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin, said that before the EU clinical trials directive in 2004 almost 90 per cent of children attending Crumlin for cancer treatment were entered into clinical trials.
However, a recent audit found that only 44 per cent of children were now entered. "Yet everybody knows entry into such trials is in the best interest of children."
He said he believed the amount of paperwork associated with the new directive was responsible for the fall-off in participation.
He said a committee comprising those involved in clinical trials across Europe was urging the EU to look again at the directive.
Dr Breathnach, who gave a talk at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in Dublin last night, just days before he is due to retire after 26 years at Crumlin, also said he tried hard to think of something nice to say about the Department of Health, but words failed him.
"For 20 years I looked for funding to try to develop the service here, and was totally ignored . . . The entire infrastructure up to last year was paid for by the fundraising of the mums and dads of the children and members of the business community."
He said the amount fundraised would equate to about €40 million in today's terms, and had paid for equipment in the hospital as well as the salaries of seven members of staff.
Of the Health Service Executive (HSE), he said: "The HSE has yet to learn the lesson that you have to work with people and, in relation to the new children's hospital, they appear to be attempting to bully 1,500 employees in this hospital into doing something which they all know is inherently wrong." This was merging the three children's hospitals into a site at the Mater which he said was inaccessible.
Dr Breathnach, one of the first full-time paediatric oncologists appointed in the State, said he believed there was a need to prepare future doctors to cope better with the job they have to do. One in 17 anaesthetists in Britain and Ireland take their own life.