AFTER a hugely successful two-month tour visiting children in hospitals across Ireland, the Children in Hospital Ireland Roadshow is drawing to a close with three events in Cork.

FEARS have been expressed that Bantry General Hospital may be downgraded after it was claimed the HSE has no immediate plans to replace the hospital’s last full-time surgeon.

HEALTH Minister Mary Harney has been urged to ensure hospital beds are more frequently occupied, after it emerged up to 20,000 bed days could be lost in Cork hospitals this year.

The possible downgrading of the South Infirmary/Victoria Hospital, which would be a consequence of the relocation of some of its services, needs to be looked at very carefully by the people of Cork and Munster.

THIS Victorian townhouse sold in the height of the boom for a sum in the mid-70s, but it took over a year to bring to contract and then the buyer backed out.

THE number of people being screened at Cork clinics for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) has almost trebled in the last 10 years.

STAFF at a Cork hospital are celebrating a special award for establishing a clinic which rapidly diagnoses and treats potentially malignant skin cancer.

A LIMERICK hospital has offered to provide a breast cancer screening service to Waterford women until BreastCheck is rolled out for the south-east hub in two years’ time.

I WISH to thank the doctors, nurses, and the good humoured cleaning and catering staff of the South Infirmary/ Victoria Hospital in Cork.

A SIGNIFICANT breakthrough has been made in the long campaign to have the national breast screening programme expanded to include women from the South and West.

WELCOME to urban gentility.

BREAST screening facilities for Cork and Galway will not be ready until 2007 - seven years after the proposed nationwide programme was started in the east of the country, it emerged yesterday.

A British nurse today said she would not give up her £25,000 (€37,900)-per-year job, despite winning £1m (€1.5m) in a live television quiz show.