Harney rules out review or compensation for MRSA victims

HEALTH Minister Mary Harney says she will not set up a judicial review nor compensate the victims of the MRSA super-bug despite requests from patient activists.

Today, the MRSA & Families organisation will use its annual convention to call for a judicial review into the failure of successive governments to implement health and safety guidelines in hospitals.

The group has also signalled its intention to seek the establishment of a redress board. It says the State, the Health Minister and the Health Service Executive have failed in their duty of care to the patients who contracted MRSA in the country’s hospitals.

Today, it will put a motion to its members calling for a change of emphasis on how it approaches the issue.

The motion will say: “Where management failed to follow their own management guidelines there can be no defence. Therefore MRSA & Families Central Council call for the setting up of a redress board to compensate MRSA victims & their families.”

Dr Teresa Graham of MRSA & Families lost her husband to the super-bug and says it has always considered calling for a judicial review but hoped it would never have to do so.

She said: “For the past 18 months we have been hoping we would not have to do this and we would not have to look for a judicial review.

“But in the past 18 months we have not moved on and the situation is as bad as ever. If the 1995 guidelines were implemented I would not be talking to you now. What we need now is for all the guidelines that are out there to be enforced but there is nobody there to do that.”

Fine Gael spokesman on health Dr Liam Twomey met with the group last week and asked Ms Harney in the Dáil if she would support either of their requests.

He backs the group but said the party could not put its full weight behind it until all of its members had an opportunity to discuss it.

He said: “I fully support a lot of what they are saying because basically the guidelines drawn up by Michael Noonan back in 1996 were not put in place and now MRSA has taken hold in our hospitals.

“I will take this to the rest of the party because obviously something as big of this would need the backing of the whole party.”

Ms Harney said her department has no plans to set up either a judicial review or a redress board that would compensate the victims of MRSA.

She said the prudent use of antibiotics and routine infection control measures would continue to underpin its policy regarding MRSA.

Dr Graham wants the terms of reference of the review to focus on the failure of governments to supervise the implementation of the 1995 “Control of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, [MRSA] in the Irish Health Care Setting” strategy.