No wonder the Society of St Vincent de Paul is up in arms over what it characterises as the current shambles in the delivery of health care. Its individual volunteers and its several conferences are at the sharp end of trying to deliver social support to the poorest in the community and do not need to be told about the inequities in the two-tier system of health care which has shamefully been allowed to develop in this republic. They see at first hand every day the people upon whom the inequity most impinges. These are the people in our society who most need health care, yet who find this care most difficult to access.
The Society's report, published on Wednesday, is not an analytical or statistical assessment of the state of our parlous health care services. It is based on the collective and individual first-hand experience of its volunteers and its conferences in recent years and the insurmountable difficulties which its impoverished clients experience in their search for even the most basic health services. It is, for instance, adamant that many cannot even find general practitioner services because the income limits which determine entitlement to medical cards are too high.
The report contains a few samples of cases dealt with by the society demonstrating inequities that would have been unthinkable even a mere 20 years ago. A woman in her 70s with two gangrenous feet was told by a hospital consultant that she would have to wait six weeks for a hospital bed, but when the Society offered to pay for a bed, that bed was made available that afternoon. A young woman with a liver transplant needed further treatment available at the time only in England and received a cheque by way of a contribution from the health board towards her travelling costs which arrived at 5.00 o'clock on the evening she was due to travel.
A woman (a medical card-holder) who had had her womb removed, having waited 18 months for the operation, was discharged from hospital after only six days, despite having an infection at the time, and not even a public health nurse visited her. In the same week a member of the SVP conference with private health insurance had the same operation and was discharged, fully recovered, after three weeks in hospital. A young woman with severe abdominal pain went to a hospital where she was told she would have to wait six weeks for a scan which she could have immediately if she paid £250. And a 4year-old child waited one year for an appointment with an ear specialist, during which time his curable condition went on to damage his speech development, so he was put on a waiting list for speech therapy.
These incidents are unconscionable and many many more, like them, which are happening daily and weekly, must not be allowed to happen any more. Meanwhile, the State has agreed to enter talks about the appointment of at least 1,000, (preferably more) new consultant posts in the hospital services. The talks are expected to be very lengthy. There is still a deficit of 2,000 hospital beds in the service and no urgent talk about a remedy for that. The St Vincent de Paul Society is right to categorise the current care system as a shambles. Every expert knows that poverty creates illness. In this Republic, impoverished citizens are the people most likely to be unable to find treatment. It is gravely scandalous, absolutely unacceptable, and in urgent need of remedy.