Groups angry over plan for 8 centres

HOSPITAL campaign groups around the country have reacted with concern to the health authorities’ decision to confine cancer services to just eight centres.

The move will mean shutting down cancer services at about 26 of the country’s smaller hospitals and the transfer of their patients and staff to large hospitals in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway and Dublin.

Thirteen hospitals were ordered to cease offering breast cancer services with immediate effect yesterday. Other cessation notices for these and about 13 other hospitals treating other forms of cancer, will begin to be issued in the next three months.

Local hospital action groups say they fear for patients who will be forced to travel longer distances for treatment and worry that the removal of cancer services will hasten the downgrading or eventual closure of their hospitals.

Peadar McMahon of the Health Services Action Group questioned the grounds for the move: “They’re saying patients will be safer in larger hospitals which is an emotive term but what audit or what research has been done to show that the smaller units are not safe and what effort has been made to find out what would be needed to make them safe?”

Independent Cllr Valerie Byrne of the Roscommon Hospital Action Group said: “We all agree with centres of excellence but we need to carry services to the local people.”

She said the added burden of long-distance travel on sick people was unfair, given the lack of public transport.

Friends of Nenagh Hospital spokesman Paul Malone said the hospital was providing a valuable chemotherapy service and he was also concerned about how patients would access the services further afield without a transport plan.

Anita McCann of the Louth Hospital Campaign Group said: “A lot of people get this illness later in life and these are people who can’t travel.”

In response to calls for a free patient transport service, HSE chief executive Professor Brendan Drumm said that the issue was being examined but that people would have to be “realistic” in their expectations.