Cancer crisis would 'not happen' in centre of excellence

THE BREAST cancer misdiagnosis crisis in Portlaoise would not have happened if Government policy had been implemented when the then Fine Gael minister for health Michael Noonan had selected Tullamore as a centre of excellence, the Dáil was told.

John Moloney, (FF, Laois-Offaly) chairman of the Oireachtas health committee told the Dáil that "if in 1999, the deputies and health board members in Laois had taken the advice of the National Cancer Forum, independently advised by Prof James Fennelly, then this debacle would not be happening in Portlaoise today".

Speaking during a debate on three reports into breast cancer services at the Midlands Regional Hospital, Mr Moloney said that when Tullamore was chosen as a lead centre a row erupted in Laois, and he led a delegation to the Department of Health.

At a meeting with the then minister Brian Cowen and Prof Fennelly, the explanation was given for selecting Tullamore. He said he changed his mind and agreed with the Offaly hospital being selected, and was accused of letting down his county.

"We lost valuable time through people attacking the position of members of the Laois group in the health board who at the time saw the sense of having one centre in the region long before Prof Tom Keane saw it. If we had followed that strategy, no blame would attach to anybody because we would have done the right thing."

Minister for Health Mary Harney insisted there were no plans to change the structure of the Health Service Executive (HSE). "Some of that misdiagnosis happened when the health boards were in place and some of it happened following the establishment of the HSE. All of those clinical errors were errors of doctors and not errors of management.

"If we are to minimise the capacity for errors, particularly in regard to breast cancer, we must have specialist doctors working in teams in major centres where there are large volumes of patients," she said.

Fine Gael health spokesman James Reilly said however the reports "prove that patients are not put first. Despite the Minister's lip service to the contrary, the HSE management is anything but effective". The ethos of administration was clear, "but there is no management ethos and people are still unclear about their roles and responsibilities, three years since the HSE's establishment. This is incredible. Any CEO or head of such an organisation would have been shown the door."

Labour spokeswoman Jan O'Sullivan said: "Sadly, I do not have confidence that we will see real changes in cancer services by the time Prof Keane returns to Canada or, on the broader issue, any real change to the way the HSE operates or the Minister runs the health services".

Sinn Féin health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, who called the HSE the "quango from hell" said "the Minister and the HSE are using public fear in the wake of the scandal to drive forward their policy to centralise all cancer services in eight centres".