Call for helicopter service to deal with rural illnesses

THE country’s four Irish Coast Guard helicopters should be allowed to respond to heart attack and illness calls where patients are in isolated areas, a medical consultant said yesterday.

The coast guard’s role is one of search and rescue and does not deal with sudden illnesses or road traffic accidents, except in exceptional circumstances.

But it does respond to illness calls on the islands off the coast, as the islands are treated the same as vessels at sea.

Limerick-based radiologist Dr Alex Stafford said reduced A&E services in local hospitals around the country are causing concern among people living in far-flung isolated areas which have poor access roads.

He said: “If the protocol under which the four Irish Coast Guard helicopters was amended to include urgent illness cases, such as heart attacks, it would allay much concern in places where roads are poor and journeys to major hospitals can be long and difficult.”

The coast guard’s Sikorsky helicopters are based at Dublin, Shannon, Sligo and Waterford and the service is provided by a Canadian company to the Department of Transport.

Dr Stafford said the HSE must now also move to ensure hospitals losing night time and weekend A&E services are given new roles.

In the mid-west he said Nenagh and Ennis general hospitals can be harnessed to cut waiting lists for day-surgical procedures, such as colonoscopies, and take pressure off the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick.

He said this would go some way towards reassuring people in Tipperary and Nenagh of a new and very important role the hospitals will have to enable people get quick access to a wide range of procedures in their own area.

Dr Stafford said: “People will have also to be assured that the development of community GP centres will go ahead because patients would then be able to have some minor procedures with their local doctor.

Dr Stafford is contesting the European Parliament elections on a health platform.