Children at risk of missing out on transplants

IRISH children awaiting transplant operations in Britain may no longer be able to avail of organs from “non-heartbeating” donors if they live more than three hours travel time from the British hospital where the surgery will take place.

Such a development is one of the possible outcomes of a report into the controversial failure to arrange a flight in sufficient time to transport a Leitrim teenager to Britain for a life-saving liver transplant in July.

The report by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has recommended that the parents of such children be made aware of such logistical difficulties so they could consider relocating to either Dublin or London to avail of organs from “non-heartbeating” donors.

No single agency or individual was blamed by HIQA for the failure to organise a flight in time to transport 14-year-old Meadhbh McGivern from Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, to Britain for the operation at King’s College Hospital in London.

The report claimed the main reason why no aircraft was organised in time to fly Meadhbh to London was the absence of any agency or individual with sole overall control and responsibility for the task.

The report documented 76 calls between staff at six different agencies involved in attempts to arrange an aircraft and crew to get Meadhbh and her family to London.

It also cited a lack of logistical awareness about travel times and aircraft capacity, and the failure to pass on key information about the shorter-than-usual timeframe to get the patient to London for the operation because of the status of the liver. HIQA pinpointed 16 individual risks which contributed to the failure to secure the flight.

Meadhbh and her family were informed at 11.30pm on July 2 that their flight to London was being cancelled as they were about to board an Irish Coast Guard helicopter at Sligo Airport. They had first been alerted at 7.20pm.

Doctors at King’s College Hospital decided to offer the organ to another patient as Meadhbh would not have reached London by 2am the following morning — the deadline for the viability of transplanting the donor liver.

The report said it was impossible to predict what might have been the outcome for Meadhbh if various agencies had been aware of key pieces of information and if she had started travelling to Dublin as soon as her family were first alerted about the donor organ.

HIQA chief executive Dr Tracey Cooper said there had been “a perfect storm of events” on the night which had combined to make aircraft from the Air Corps and Irish Coast Guard unavailable.

“It was clear from the findings of our inquiry that the people involved in attempting to get Meadhbh to London entered into desperate means to try to do so,” said Dr Cooper.

“However, this was in the absence of any organised or managed system, or the required knowledge of logistics to adequately do so,” she added.

The HSE said it has since agreed a revised protocol which would see its National Ambulance Service act as overall coordinator for transport arrangements for transplant patients.

Meadhbh’s father Joe said he was “shocked” to discover that nobody had overall responsibility for co-ordinating flight arrangements for his daughter.