Cork hospital’s children’s unit ‘should be flattened’

A consultant paediatrician working in a hospital unit where up to 20,000 children are treated annually has said it is not fit for purpose and should be flattened.

Dr David Mullane, who works at Cork University Hospital (CUH), said staff struggle to deliver a top-class service on a building that was “stuck on as an afterthought, shoe-horned into whatever space was left” when the hospital was built in 1978.

This is despite the fact that the unit is as busy as Tallaght and Temple St children’s hospitals, dealing with in excess of 7,500 admissions annually, as well as 5,000 attendances at the children’s day unit and 10,000 in the out-patient department.