City mayor attacks healthcare system

DESPITE all the progress made in medical circles, far too many are still crying out for the very minimum in healthcare, a city mayor says.

The gap in Ireland’s two-tier health system is broadening, despite all the political promises, Kilkenny mayor Martin Brett said yesterday, as he helped launch a fundraiser for cancer sufferers.

As the South East Radiotherapy Trust was extended into Kilkenny yesterday, the mayor and others appealed to the people of Carlow and Kilkenny to dig deep and support the fund which helps transport cancer sufferers to Dublin for the radiotherapy care they need.

A similar drive launched in Waterford last November has been a phenomenal success with the employees of Bauch and Lomb clubbing together to put an ambulance on the road for sufferers. That ambulance will bring its first group of patients to Cork for radiotherapy on September 11.

Now it is hoped that the Carlow and Kilkenny public, particularly company employees, will devise similar ways of fundraising for transport services for cancer sufferers.

“I’ve grasped this idea whole-heartedly,” Mr Brett said. “My own father died from cancer. We won’t have radiotherapy at WRH until 2011. A lot of patients will suffer between now and then.

“I appeal to the people of the Kilkenny area to come on board and help fund-raise so we can put our own ambulance on the road. None of us knows when we might need it ourselves down the road,” he added.