Government breaks guidelines for cancer care

THE Government is breaking its own guidelines for the safe provision of chemotherapy by failing to provide dedicated cancer wards at hospitals.

The Department of Health guidelines state: “Cancer chemotherapy should be administered in designated inpatient or day care outpatient facilities which are properly staffed and equipped for the purpose.”

Yet neither Cork University Hospital (CUH) nor Waterford Regional Hospital (WRH) has a dedicated inpatient cancer ward. WRH has just six dedicated inpatient beds (not a ward) and in CUH, cancer patients are scattered throughout the hospital.

That situation led to the resignation of an award-winning cancer specialist last month. Dr Oscar Breathnach handed in his notice after four years of campaigning unsuccessfully for a dedicated inpatient cancer ward.

The department guidelines also state as “essential” the provision of a safe environment for the administration of “complex life-threatening treatment”, which “can be hazardous to both patients and staff”.

Yet in WRH, because the number of patients requiring chemotherapy frequently outnumber the beds available, those whose immune systems are severely weakened by chemo end up on wards next to patients who are infectious.

South-East Cancer Foundation spokeswoman Jane Bailey said the basic facilities necessary to allow patients be appropriately separated were absent.

The hospital submitted plans to the Department of Health for a 31-bed oncology/haematology ward about 18 months ago. A department spokesman said he did not know if it would be included in the capital funding plan for 2005-2008.

Irish Cancer Society chief executive John McCormack said hospitals should have a dedicated oncology ward.

The Health Department said responsibility for delivery of hospital services, including chemotherapy, lay with the Health Services Executive. “The department has asked the HSE to investigate the administration of chemotherapy.”

It said the principal element in relation to the implementation of guidelines “is the provision of services by medical consultants with appropriate training in cancer chemotherapy”. There was a €720m investment in cancer care since 1997.