Hospital ‘must plan for under-18s surge’

IRELAND’S €800 million National Paediatric Hospital could face significant difficulties unless its planned capacity takes account of the country’s surging under-18 population, experts have warned.

Speaking at support group Children in Hospital Ireland’s (CHI) annual lecture, specialists from the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children — which caters for a population base of almost five million patients — said if the proposed facility planned for today’s needs instead of those in the future it would soon become outdated and overcrowded.

Under plans confirmed by Health Minister Mary Harney in 2006, Ireland’s three children’s hospitals — Temple Street Children’s University Hospital, Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, and the National Children’s Hospital in Tallaght — will be amalgamated into a single 380-bed facility at the Mater Hospital by 2012.