Kerry General Hospital is being systematically run down by the HSE. The hospital is now facing a even deeper crisis with outpatients’ clinics closing for six weeks every year. Annagh Ward is closing at weekends with staff there being given only 24 hours to accept or transfer. The slim hopes that the recommendations in the Vision for Change report of January 2006 on the future of Mental Health policy in Ireland were dealt a devastating blow when e1,000,000 was knocked off the budget in Kerry. In the A&E, growing numbers of patients of all ages and all conditions are put on trolleys often for more than 24 hours due to the bed crisis at the hospital.
As if this wasn’t enough there still is no Diabetic consultant and proper Renal treatment. The Cardiology unit is significantly under-resourced, while the Angiography service which provides x-rays of blood vessels was closed down three years ago. The removal of Cancer Care services means that ill patients have to make a round-trip to Cork to be treated. Only recently has a Breast-Check Facility been announced. We need adequately funded health care at our hospital.
The crisis at Kerry General Hospital is caused to a large extent by the chronic shortage in staff numbers. This is what Michael Dineen the INO local representative had to say on this issue:
“The nursing shortages within Kerry General Hospital are so acute that they pose a daily challenge to our members in their efforts to deliver a safe and appropriate level of care to the patients in their charge … the only option to them at this juncture is to curtail services”.
All this is part Harney’s cuts in the health budget and crazy policy of co-location of private hospitals next to public ones. She has now cut a further e1.1 Billion off the health budget and is directly responsible for the needless pain and suffering large numbers of people in Tralee are having to put up with.
The argument that People Before Profit are putting forward is simple. We need to fight back in the way the old age pensioners did, and won, over the medical card issue. It was their courageous resistance to Harney that has inspired the more general protest movement which we see against the Fianna Fail-Green government today and which is part of a growing international movement for social change. People power can win. We should get rid of this ridiculous two-tier health system and replace it with a free universal health service. Privatising elements of the health service is not an intelligent solution: we want world-class public health care.
