Category: Health/HSE

CF patients: Action at last?

This report in the Irish Times seems to indicate that the embarrassment level for politicians has reached a point where they might actually act or at least allow the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland to act. (See previous posts here and here).

Eithne Donnellan

Wed, Jan 23, 2008

The possibility of placing a prefabricated structure with single rooms for cystic fibrosis patients on the site of Dublin’s St Vincent’s hospital is currently being discussed with Minister for Health Mary Harney.

Godfrey Fletcher, the chief executive of the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland, said yesterday that he believed if the will was there such a structure with between 15 and 20 single rooms could be on the hospital site within months.

“If necessary we will pay for it,” he said.

It would be an interim solution to the current situation where a lack of single rooms at the hospital puts vulnerable CF patients at risk of picking up infections from other patients.

He said the association was unhappy that the current interim solution put forward by HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm would take up to a year to be put in place.

It would involve vacating an existing ward in the hospital and converting it into about 11 single rooms for the use of CF patients.
“There are a lot of angry, desperate and frustrated CF patients and their families and we are not prepared to wait for an interim solution that will take another year,” he said.

© 2008 The Irish Times

Broken promises

Irish Independent journalist Sam Smyth spoke on Liveline last Monday (21st Jan) about his daughter who has Cystic Fibrosis. As I recall she is in her early twenties and so has entered the danger zone for CF suffers.

If she lived in Northern Ireland or any other country in Europe she wouldn’t enter the danger zone until she was in her thirties. This is because in those countries CF patients are provided with the basics necessary to keep them as safe as possible.

Irish politicians, by their consistent failure to provide even such basic facilities, have clearly demonstrated that they don’t care.

One very upset parent of a CF sufferer suggested that the Government/HSE don’t care because those with CF die young anyway so why waste resources. I agree with her.

The odd thing about Smyth’s interview was his complete lack of anger. He even praised Harney and Ahern for their ‘efforts’ and spoke as if he really believed the promise made by Prof. Drumm that proper facilities would be provided sometime next year. This promise has been made and broken for the last 14 years.

HSE – Out of control and deadly

There are people in the Health Service Executive (HSE) who go to work everyday and make decisions that result in great suffering and sometimes even death for patients.

This diseased, out of control, bureaucratic monster was created by and is strongly defended by cowardly and incompetent politicians.

In the O’Malley cancer misdiagnosis case, for example, somebody within the HSE decided that it was better to risk the lives of women who may have been misdiagnosed rather than admit that a mistake had been made.

All last week on Liveline we listened to horror stories from patients suffering from Cystic Fibrosis who are dying at least ten years younger than suffers in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

Their lives are put in danger because the HSE/Government refuses to provide isolation units. These units are absolutely vital for CF suffers in order to avoid picking up potentially fatal infections.

Promises going back many years are still being broken so patients continue to suffer and die before their time. Those who have the power to provide these units are well aware of what is needed, yet they consistently and consciously fail to take the necessary action.

The plight of the CF suffers drew a huge response from the general public and businesses, here are just some of the offers of help.

The Construction Workers Health Trust offered a ready to go state of the art modular unit consisting of 12 individual en-suite rooms. They have also promised €60,000 to fund the unit for one year.

Aqua Fire Prevention has offered to supply all fire safety equipment.

Taxi drivers have offered to transport CF patients wherever needed.

A private citizen has offered a five bed roomed en-suite house situated at the gates of Beaumont hospital.

Ordinary PAYE workers have offered to pay for the care of a CF patient for a year.

It is highly unlikely that any of these generous offers will be accepted by the HSE/Government.

To do so would be to admit that the system had failed, it would be to tacitly admit that all the politicians and bureaucrats involved are incompetent.

It would also mean admitting that our health system is in need of the same type of charity that we provide for Third World countries. The offer by the Construction Workers Health Trust to provide modular units could be seen in the same light as the Niall Mellon Township Initiative which builds brick houses for shack dwellers in South Africa.

On his visit to South Africa last week Bertie Ahern was puffed up with pride by the great work being done by Irish citizens to help these poor Africans. But it simply wouldn’t do to admit that a so called First World country like Ireland was accepting the same type of charity to prop up its health system.

There is already a precedent of the HSE refusing badly needed help. In May 2005, Ben Dunne donated €30,000 towards the cost of three portakabins after numerous callers to Liveline recounted stories of spending days on trolleys in the A & E section of Dublin’s Mater Hospital.

The HSE refused the offer on the grounds of patient safety. Janette Byrne of Patients Together was not amused;

“The refusal principally due to patient safety issues was farcical. There is no way they could make A & E any more unsafe than it is at the moment.”

The bottom line is that politicians and bureaucrats are more than willing to put patient’s lives at risk in order to cover up their own incompetence.

Puffed up politicians

When Minister for Health, Mary Harney, was asked for her reaction to a recent poll that said only 13% of people believed the health service had improved since she had taken over and a massive 53% said that it had got worse, she replied:

“That’s not surprising because the public perceive the health service on the basis of what they hear from programmes like yours.”

(RTE, News at One, 1st item)

This is more than just the usual cowardly political reaction of blaming the media. It is patronizing and insulting to the intelligence of Irish citizens. Effectively, Harney is suggesting that ordinary people are incapable of coming to their own independent conclusions.

As a further defence she quoted figures from another poll that found up to 90% of patients were very happy with the health service. The crucial difference here is that it was a poll of patients.

I remember around the mid 1980s when military personnel were getting more vocal about the primitive conditions in military hospitals the authorities responded by asking patients to sign a form declaring that they had received adequate care or, alternatively, outline any complaints they might have.

Not surprisingly, I never witnessed or heard of a single patient making a complaint.

The 90% positive response also reminds me of so called elections in places like Saddam’s Iraq or the North Korea of Kim Jong il.

These are situations where those in power are more interested in their own puffed up appearances rather than facing inconvenient realities – Much like Ireland in 2007.

A powerful 'nobody'

Janette Byrne describes herself as a nobody (Irish Independent) .

In fact she is more powerful than any politician or bureaucrat. If the power she holds could be instilled in even a significant minority of Irish citizens then this country would be rid of the likes of Harney, Ahern and their army of faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats. Here’s her letter (Emphasis mine).

I write to you in light of the recent uncertainty surrounding the exclusion of oncologist John Crown from ‘The Late Late Show’ panel.

I had the honour of being a ‘Late Late Show’ guest over a year ago (September 29, 2006). I was there, in part, to highlight my book, ‘If It Were Just Cancer’, but also as a founder member of the lobby group Patients Together. I am just an ordinary person, a cancer patient who suffered the indignity of A&E, a filthy ward, the fear and terror of not getting a bed and, as a consequence, being denied the right to avail of my urgently required chemotherapy.

From the day I was given the all clear, I vowed that, on behalf of the other girls, women, and men, not as blessed as me, that I would highlight our suffering. I wanted the nation to know, what it meant to be seriously ill in modern Ireland. I am not an academic. I am not a mover and shaker.

I grew up in a close, loving family of eight in Finglas in what was known as a “Corpo-bought” house. I left school at 15. I worked as a hairdresser, had a son at 19, worked in a tyre outlet and then as a rep. I eventually started my own business in 1994.

My new position in the spotlight on ‘The Late Late Show’, in the papers and on the radio was terrifying. I lost many hours of sleep with the worry of letting everybody down. My mother believes I survived at God’s will to do this work. I am inclined to believe I am driven by those gone before me, goading me to stand up and be heard.

Where am I going with all this?

The night I appeared on ‘The Late Late Show’ was one of the most privileged in my life. My family, friends and supporters were dotted around the country watching, my heart was bursting with pride and fear. I wanted to say something that would touch the Irish people; I wanted to make them understand how we, as patients, are being failed. I was sick with nerves, but I knew the girls on the ward were with me in spirit.

I made it through the show but fell into my son’s arms crying and shaking when it finished. It was just all too much for me. I remember one of the researchers hugging me, “Well done Janette, you were brilliant and you have caused such a fuss”.
I was surprised and worried. What had I done?

She explained that “certain people” had been screaming down the phone wanting to know: “Who made the decision to put her on the show? Why were we not told she would be on?” The researcher took delight in their annoyance given that they can find it hard to get any comments or even returned calls from these people.

And here they were, hopping mad, phoning more and more irritated as I continued speaking. What in God’s name could make these people so irate? Little old me rattling on about the indignity of our health service, what was I saying that incited such fear and upset? I have found the answer.

I was telling the truth.

I was an ordinary person telling how it is. I had nothing to gain and nothing to lose. Until that moment, I had never realised how powerful the ordinary person who is willing to stand up and be heard can be. I find it so sad that we have a section of our community who want to silence the truth.

Following the show and my naive decision to gate crash a HSE press gathering, I received texts from a renowned health correspondent saying he had received calls questioning who I was. Who was funding Patients Together? Who was yanking my chain? How many members do we have, etc?

I will save these scrutinisers any further time-wasting and stress worrying about me.

I am a nobody, a taxpayer, an Irish citizen, an honest and loyal person who whispered a promise to the dead that I would be their voice until our overcrowded, under-funded, diseased Health Service learns to treat us with dignity and care.

Really you have nothing to be afraid of.

Janette Byrne
Patients Together
Finglas Park
Dublin 11

Nothing to do with me!!

Let’s cut through all the waffle surrounding the removal of John Crown from last Friday’s Late Late Show. (All emphasis mine)

It was censorship, at least by proxy.

The censorship originated from a Government source and was successful because, generally speaking, RTE does not have the courage to stand up to politicians.

State censorship of free speech is a serious threat to democracy so all those connected to this event will strongly deny any involvement, blame somebody else or put themselves in a neutral position.

Pat Kenny said.

“The decision was made at a higher level than the team of the Late Late Show production.”

So, Pat can say: Nothing to do with me.

Bertie Ahern said; “No phone calls were made to my knowledge”

So, Ahern can say: Nothing to do with me.

Mary Harney said she personally had no knowledge that Prof. Crown was to appear on the programme.

So, Harney can say: Nothing to do with me.

The Director General (Sub. Req’d) of RTE has emphatically denied that the panel change was made after a phone call to him by Ms Harney.

So, the DG can say: Nothing to do with me.

The Managing Director of RTÉ Television, Noel Curran said there was absolutely no political interference in the decision to change the panel of guests.

Mr. Curran said he made the decision to change the panel to achieve a more balanced range of views and said no-one had contacted him prior to his action.

So, we know who made the decision and most importantly, we know he made the decision on his own without contact with anyone.

Finally, the most unaccountable, the most important and certainly the most useful player in the whole episode – An anonymous Government spokesman – This is what he said;

He did tell the programme team that he was of the view that the proposed panel was unbalanced

(An anonymous, unaccountable civil servant can phone the national broadcaster and express his, apparently, personal views about who should or should not partake in a crucial television debate – and he’s taken seriously?).

He did not request that Prof. Crown be removed. (Why would he need to be so crude, the contact was the message not what was said)

So, while the anonymous and unaccountable Government spokesman, operating at a safe distance from Harney and Ahern, was telling the show’s production team that he thought the panel was unbalanced, the Director General of RTE was, coincidently and without contact with anybody, coming to the exact same conclusion.

Oh, by the way, politicians will be deciding today whether to approve an RTE application for a €2 licence fee increase.

Sunshine for the politicians; shade for the peasants

Prof. Drumm must be sick, sick that he accepted the job as chief executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE). Sick that he allowed himself to be duped into taking the job of reforming a heath system that has become an uncontrollable monster. Sick to witness the very people responsible for creating that monster; turn on him like a pack of vicious wolves.

For decades, Irish politicians were in charge of the health service and for decades they did what Irish politicians do best, used it as a means of buying votes. It was ‘jobs for the boys’ and to hell with the consequences.

There was a time when there were only two or three health boards but because every politician wanted a board in his area this number mushroomed into eleven. Imagine, eleven health boards to organise health facilities for about three million people.

This meant that there was eleven separate, grotesquely overstaffed, administrations choking the system to death and literally putting lives in danger. When the situation began to get out of control it was decided to abolish all eleven boards and replace them with a single authority that would bring reform, efficiency and, most importantly, a good health service to the Irish people.

To achieve this laudable aim job cuts would have to be made, work practices would have to change; civil servants would have to move, efficiencies would have to be made, some jobs would even have to be lost. In a nutshell, politicians would have to show courageous leadership and civil servants would have to cooperate.

This, of course, never happened. Instead, the cowardly politicians pretended to abolish the boards, it was all done – on paper. Not a single civil servant lost his job, nobody moved, there were no rationalisations or efficiencies. Everybody was still entitled to guaranteed promotions, guaranteed wage rises, guaranteed benchmarking – for life.

In effect, all that happened was the creation of a new twelfth health board. This was the mother of all health boards, it was going to supervise the inefficiencies and incompetence of all the other boards and for that it required and got a super bloated layer of administration staff.

From that moment, the grotesque monster was rampaging out of control and Irish citizens began to suffer even more, and at times, die. But the cowardly politicians had covered themselves well. In a by now common strategy, the HSE and in particular its chief executive was used as a buffer to distance cowardly politicians from the mess they had created. Mary Harney, the alleged Minister for Health, frequently suggests that the latest scandal is a matter for the HSE, nothing to do with her.

It must have been sickening for Prof. Drumm to listen to the wolf pack as they set about their work of abdicating responsibility in our national parliament yesterday; it was certainly vomit inducing for me. Here’s a flavour of what the cowardly incompetents had to say: (Full report on Drivetime, 3rd item)

Labour TD, Joan Burton spoke about the lack of trust that the public and politicians had in the HSE, about how impossible it was for politicians to get answers. No mention of political culpability.

Fianna Fail TD, Mary O’Rourke who has been in politics for decades, who has held several senior positions in government, who is a member of the party that has held power for more years than any other party, who, by dint of her cowardice, is one of the principal architects of the present mess, was ruthless in her condemnation of the HSE and in particular Prof. Drumm.

She related how she had recently left a boring session in the Dail to take a walk down to Brown Thomas. On the way she met eleven women all with horror stories about friends and relations affected by cancer.

Think about that, an Irish politician leaves our national parliament suffering from boredom, meets several distressed citizens and is incapable of making a connection between the two events. She then demonstrates a complete lack of intelligence by using the event to bolster her attack on Prof. Drumm as if it was he, rather than her that was responsible for their distress.

Fine Gael TD, John O’Mahony from Mayo spoke with the typical narrow minded parochialism, the hypocritical ‘but’ factor that Olivia O’Leary (Drivetime) spoke about. “I’m all in favour of centres of excellence” ‘but’ my constituency should keep its facilities.

Labour TD, Liz McManus spoke of the need for the establishment of a patient’s safety authority. Yet another layer of bureaucracy staffed by self serving unaccountable civil servants.

Fianna Fail TD, Margaret Conlon, amazingly, spoke the truth with clarity. “We cannot talk out of both sides of our mouths; we need to ensure that our resources are not spread too widely and too thinly because if this is the case, everyone loses.” Cleary, Ms. Conlon is a new TD and has yet to learn the mafia traditions of her chosen party.

Fianna Fail TD, Beverly Flynn would make an excellent tutor of those mafia traditions. A politician with no reputation to lose, daughter of a disgraced politician who had no scruples about cheating on his taxes and operating illegal offshore accounts, took the same narrow minded and hypocritical view as Fine Gael TD John O’Mahony.

Progressive Democrats TD and Minister for Health (without responsibility), Mary Harney, mouthed the standard and by now insulting apology to the victims.

Mary O’Rourke spoke about a dawn that is always promised but never actually dawns, that she was in despair over the health services.

Why would she be in despair? She exists in the unaccountable, grotesquely overpaid and arrogant world of Irish politics. She, like most of her colleagues, do not have the courage to actually do anything about the situation.

She only encounters reality when she wanders out of the rarefied world of our useless and boring parliament, she will never find herself in the situation of the eleven distressed women she met, she will never have to worry about a lack of medical facilities for herself or her family.

Her dawn and that of her colleagues arrived years ago when they created a system that provides constant sunshine for themselves, family and friends but leaves a large percentage of the people they claim to represent in the shade and some of them – condemned to the ultimate darkness.

Copy of this post to:

Prof. Drumm
HSE
Mary Harney, TD
Joan Burton, TD
Mary O’Rourke, TD
John O’Mahony, TD
Liz McManus, TD
Margaret Conlon, TD
Beverly Flynn, TD
Fianna Fail Party
Fine Gael Party
Labour Party
Progressive Democrats Party
Green Party

Straight talker

Professor John Crown, consultant oncologist, was interviewed on Today with Pat Kenny (Tuesday) about the disgraceful state of cancer treatment in Ireland.

Prof. Crown is one of those rare people who say exactly what they mean with passion and without regard for the sensibilities of official or political egos.

When some listeners suggested that there was a political agenda behind his strong attack on Mary Harney and the Progressive Democrats he replied:

“Don’t question my motives, they are clear. I detest everything the PDs stand for. I grew up in the 1980s in the Haughey era of Irish politics.

I was one of the people who shouted hurray when the PDs came to light as the new voice for principled politics in Ireland, principles which they have systematically abandoned year by year.

I was delighted to hear the good news this morning that deputy Grealish was thinking of joining Fianna Fail. I wish they would just fold up the tent, go into Fianna Fail and stop acting as stalking horses for Fianna Fail.”

I couldn’t agree more. The interview is well worth listening to.

Brutal reality

This excellent letter in today’s Irish Times cuts right to the core of why Susie Long died.

Madam,

The death of Susie Long has provoked understandable expressions of sympathy and concern from many people. The Taoiseach expressed his own anguish in Dáil Éireann on Tuesday. These sentiments seem to be a genuine mark of his humanity.

He implied that the system had failed her. We disagree. The system actually worked exactly as it is designed to do. She was a public patient and therefore had to go on a waiting list – for seven months. Another patient with the same condition was treated within a few days because he had private health insurance.

This is the two-tier health system, working perfectly as designed.

Yours, etc,

ELIZABETH WATERS, TONY KENNY, Connaught Street, Phibsboro, Dublin 7.