There is still no sign of promised upgrade to CUH paediatric unit

Clinical director Dr David Mullane says the CUH paediatric department's accommodation is not fit for purpose, and a promised €60m overhaul is long overdue

'Each year the funding doesn’t come the staff are getting more despondent': Dr David Mullane, consultant paediatrician and clinical director for paediatrics at Cork University Hospital.  Picture: David Keane

Dr David Mullane, a Cork native, knows the wards of Cork University Hospital (CUH) well. He’s been in and out of them since his childhood when one of his siblings suffered, and thankfully recovered from, leukaemia. Other members of the family, including himself, suffered from asthma too. All this combined to ignite an interest in paediatric medicine, followed by a speciality in respiratory illnesses. When he returned to CUH as a doctor, the children’s wards hadn’t changed much since he was a kid, and since then he has been part of the push to get the paediatric facilities upgraded.

As a regional centre, the paediatric department at CUH handles everything but the most specialist cases.