Number of children on hospital waiting lists in south-southwest equivalent to a large town

Almost 17,000 children are waiting for treatment in acute hospitals in the south-southwest, it has emerged.

President of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, Dr Donal O'Hanlon, said it was “hugely worrying” that the number of children waiting for hospital care was equivalent to the population of Carrigaline or Ballincollig in Co. Cork.

Of the 117,000 children nationally waiting for hospital care, 16,938 are waiting for treatment in acute public hospitals in the South-South West Hospital Group.

“The fact that this information is not published regularly does not make the agonising wait for children and their families any less real or less damaging for the children whose healthy development is on hold,” said Dr O'Hanlon.

The IHCA said the data, released by the HSE to Fianna Fáil's health spokesperson, Stephen Donnelly, shows the full extent of the problem in the Munster region.

Acute public hospitals across Ireland, such as the Cork University Hospital or the Mercy Hospital, do not publish stand-alone data on the number of children waiting to access their services.

Over 60,000 children were waiting for treatment in the three children's hospitals in Dublin but outside of the capital, a further 57,000 are waiting.

The IHCA said the national figure does not include children waiting for hospitals' diagnostics such as MRI scans or radiology because the HSE does not capture such data.

“The early years in a child’s life are both short and critically important to their lifelong health and development,” said Dr O'Hanlon.

Our health service is failing them during these essential, formative years.

“The solution lies in addressing our acute public hospital bed shortages and the ongoing consultant recruitment crisis which are both adding to the long waiting lists faced by our children,” he said.

“We cannot meaningfully address the impact of tens of thousands of children waiting for care unless there is transparency on the full extent of the problem.”

Meanwhile, the HSE said hospital emergency department attendances and admissions for all patients were higher this week than the same week last year.

It pointed out that there were 423 patients on trolleys in EDs today, a 33% increase on the same day last year and 20% higher than on the same day last week.

There were 29 people with flu admitted to hospital this week, bringing the season total to 70 and while there have been three admissions to intensive care to date, no deaths have been reported.

Cork University Hospital has been particularly busy and it has been reported by RTÉ that a number of ambulances were waiting for over two hours to hand over patients to emergency staff.

CUH said it was “regrettable” that some patients faced a delay but this was because of the large number of very ill patients needing admission.

According to the HSE, there were 40 patients on trolleys in the hospital's ED Thursday, with 21 waiting more than nine hours and nine waiting more than 24 hours.