CORK University Hospital, one of the two national centres designated by the Government for receiving victims of nuclear and chemical incidents, does not have decontamination unit to cope with such emergencies, the hospital authorities have confirmed.
This is despite repeated calls from the Southern Health Board as well as senior medical personnel in Cork for the provision of a dedicated unit to cope with either emergency.
Cork Harbour has 16 chemical companies in its immediate environs, the largest single concentration of this type of industry in the State. The absence of a decontamination unit at the Cork University Hospital is a cause for grave concern, according to Mr Stephen Cusack, a consultant in accident and emergency medicine at the hospital.
Mr Cusack, who was one of the main architects of a recently published report reviewing the accident and emergency services in Cork, has been an outspoken critic of the lack of facilities and has warned that Cork University Hospital Munster's main emergency hospital, with some 600 beds and 1,700 staff cannot discharge its responsibilities in the current situation.
According to the report Cork University Hospital Accident and Emergency Department has been designated by the Government as one of the two national centres for reception of victims of nuclear and chemical incidents.
There are no facilities presently available within the Accident and Emergency Department or at Cork University Hospital to enable it to fulfil this role. It is recommended that negotiations with the Department of Health with regard to these issues be brought to a satisfactory early conclusion."
Ironically, while the Southern Health Board has effectively rejected Mr Cusack's criticisms, claiming that the accident and emergency plan does work, one of its own top executives, Mr Tony McNamara, who manages the Cork University Hospital, is also a signatory to the report. But he says that signing up to a document does not mean one agrees with every line.
Does that mean that Mr Cusack's criticisms are unfair? Mr McNamara says there is a need for a dedicated decontamination unit at the hospital and that negotiations on this are ongoing with the Department of Health. Mr Cusack says that the negotiations must be brought to an early conclusion.
Cork has experienced many major emergencies. Since the late 1970s, the emergency services have coped with the Whiddy tanker disaster in which 50 people lost their lives in 1979 the Glaunthaune bus disaster in which five died and 27 were injured in 1978 the Buttevant train disaster in August 1980 in which 18 people died, and the Air India disaster off the south west coast, in which 329 people lost their lives in 1985.
These accidents, which stretched every available sector of the State and voluntary services in Cork, were dealt with professionally, and proved, according to Capt Brian Phelan, the chief ambulance officer of the Southern Health Board, that the accident and emergency plan for Cork as it existed then worked well.
Last June, the Southern Health Board the two local authorities in Cork, the fire services and the Garda authorities published the first joint major accident and emergency plan ever devised in the Republic.
This plan may become a blueprint for other health hoard areas, given that Cork has had to deal with so many major incidents over the past two decades. Capt Phelan told The Irish Times that the new plan was designed to ensure that the various services were working in tandem.
He said plans were now under way to computerise the emergency plan, allowing each part of the critical response chain to have access to identical computer data on emergency back up.
These assurances aside, the hospital still needs a specialised unit to treat the victims of chemical accidents if they arise.
Under the present procedures, the chemical companies in Cork are required to have decontamination units on site and if these should fail because of an explosion or other reasons, the fire services then become the major source of decontamination.
The main agent used in decontaminating people involved in a chemical accident is water, and the decontamination units in most companies consist of showers.
Capt Phelan said he was still very concerned that the main hospital in the city did not have a special unit to definitively decontaminate people once they have first been treated on site.