Survival rates for children with congenital heart conditions in the Republic and Northern Ireland now match the best global results following 15 years of co-operation between doctors on both parts of the island, an Oireachtas committee has been told.
More than a decade ago children faced long waiting lists in Dublin and Belfast, if they could get treatment at all, with a lack of qualified staff and shortages of equipment, said Dr Paul Oslizlok of the All-Island Cancer Research Institute.
Initially, there was “considerable reluctance” among parents, consultants, doctors and nurses in Dublin “to buy into an all-island congenital heart network”. However, he said, opposition has faded away.
To make further gains, however, consultants, specialist doctors, nurses and medical researchers should be appointed to cross-Border posts where they can work in any hospital on the island, he said.
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Illustrating the problem, Dr Oslizlok, who chairs the all-island body, highlighted the difficulties encountered when transferring seriously ill children by ambulance between Dublin and Belfast.
When an ambulance transfers a baby, every doctor, nurse and ambulance crew involved must be licensed in the Republic and in Northern Ireland, he told the Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement on Tuesday.
“It’s fine if it’s one crew once only, but if there are different people time and time again, it becomes logistically very difficult and very costly,” he told the committee, chaired by Fianna Fáil TD Cormac Devlin.
Acknowledging the “really important” sensitivities surrounding medical licensing, Dr Oslizlok said: “I think a better system [is] that we recognise each other’s licensing system better on the island of Ireland.”
Deep ties have grown between doctors on both sides of the Border since the Belfast Agreement, also known as the Good Friday agreement, said Dr Oslizlok, who said paediatric cardiologists used to know “every paediatrician throughout the world”, bar those in Northern Ireland.
The Republic and Northern Ireland together have the critical population needed to make centres of excellence viable, he said, adding that the island has “just about sufficient” population for one congenital heart surgery clinic.
Many obstacles have been overcome, and healthcare for all children with heart disease has improved, agreed Prof Frank Casey, a consultant paediatric cardiologist at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children.
Meanwhile, the All-Island Cancer Research Institute urged the Oireachtas committee to press for HSE funding for proton therapy for cancer patients in the Republic.
Currently, treatment for patients in Britain and Northern Ireland is publicly funded, but people in the Republic must pay for it themselves, even though the expensive treatment can last for months.
“Families are torn apart,” said Prof Gerry Hanna, from Trinity College Dublin and St Luke’s Hospital. He said Ireland will be the only country in Europe not to offer proton therapy to patients once Portugal “goes live in a couple of years’ time”.
