People are dying as a result of lack of "fair access" to health services in the Republic, it was claimed yesterday.
The director of the Adelaide Hospital Society, Dr Fergus O'Ferrall, told Siptu's national nursing convention in Cork that this was occurring despite a promise in the 2001 national health strategy to achieve equity in Irish healthcare.
He said many of the proposed actions to address inequity set out in the strategy had not been taken. These include a failure to provide an extra 200,000 medical cards and to eliminate hospital waiting lists.
"Political leadership since 2001 has been cowardly and feeble in this regard. As a result, the poor and the vulnerable suffer more disproportionately and die more prematurely than do better off citizens," he said. "Lack of fair access means people are dying unnecessarily. For example, we know that the mortality rate for the lowest occupational class for heart disease is about 120 per cent higher than in the highest occupational class.
"Yet there are substantial variations in the provision of diagnostic, therapeutic and rehabilitative services for coronary heart disease, with the poor having least access to such services," he added.
Siptu president Jack O'Connor also referred to failures to honour promises made in the health strategy.
The most glaring example, he said, was the failure to provide 800 residential care places a year between 2001 and 2008 for the elderly. This was adding to the crisis in acute general hospitals and exacerbating the crisis in nursing home care, he said.