Mother of campaign group leader is discharged

ONE of the last patients to be discharged from Monaghan General Hospital’s acute surgical ward at the weekend was the elderly mother of the head of the group campaigning against the continual downgrading of the hospital.

Monaghan Community Alliance chair, Peadar McMahon, whose 91-year old mother recently underwent emergency surgery at the hospital, has warned that more people would die needlessly because of the removal of the round-the-clock service.

“You cannot have emergency medicine without emergency surgery. Patients needing emergency surgery will have to be transferred to other acute hospitals, and in some cases that may be too late,” he warned.