Opposition to challenge Geagea ‘cover-up’

OPPOSITION parties are planning to challenge the health authorities’ decision to withhold details on the number of patient cases under review because of concerns about the work of a Finnish pathologist.

Last Saturday, the Irish Examiner revealed that in order to avoid public panic, the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the Department of Health agreed to suppress figures relating to the number of patients whose diagnoses involved Dr Antoine Geagea.

Dr Geagea was asked by management at Cork University Hospital (CUH) to resign his post last August after concerns about his work were raised. A British laboratory was commissioned to review his work but the HSE has so far refused to say how many patient files are included in this review.

An email released to the Irish Examiner last week under a Freedom of Information (FoI) request shows the decision not to release patient numbers was a joint decision of the department and the HSE, with the latter forecasting “widespread alarm in the public and unnecessary confusion in the media” if the figures were made available.

Yesterday, Fine Gael TD Bernard Allen said he intends to raise the issue of the news blackout at next Thursday’s meeting of the Joint Committee on Health and Children.

“This decision not to release patient figures was a premeditated cover-up. There are no other words to describe it. We have reached a new low in our health service. There are people out there in a high state of anxiety awaiting the report on Dr Geagea’s work.”

Mr Allen described the withholding of information as “media manipulation”. He said as chair of the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee, he intends to query how much of HSE funds are spent on communications and media relations “when there are so many cutbacks elsewhere”.

It is six months since the Geagea review began. According to the HSE it is “almost finalised” and will shortly be published. Another six reports dealing with crises in cancer care in Limerick, Galway and the midlands have also yet to be published.

Labour TD Jan O’Sullivan has criticised the delays. Ms O’Sullivan has also said she is “very disturbed” at what appears to be a “determined effort to suppress information about failures in our cancer services to which the public is entitled” in light of a decision not to release the number of patients affected by the Geagea review.

She said it suggested that “a wish to avoid political embarrassment”, and not the legal difficulties cited by the HSE, was delaying publication of the report.

In an email from HSE head of communications Joe Lennon to government press secretary Eoghan O’Neachtain, obtained under FoI, Mr Lennon said: “In consultation with the Department of Health and Children, it was decided not to go into detail in relation to the numbers of patients involved... Doing so would only serve to cause wide- spread alarm in the public and unnecessary confusion in the media.”

Previous media reports suggested that 166 patients featured in the Geagea review, with question marks over 15 diagnoses.