'There is always new equipment coming out' — Hospitals rely on charity for high-tech devices

Neurosurgeon Mahmoud Kamel said: “There is always new equipment coming out and they are very expensive." File picture

Charitable donations fill a financial gap for public hospitals in need of new high-tech equipment, a top neurosurgeon working in Cork said.

Cork University Hospital is one of two main specialist centres for neurosurgery including brain tumour surgery. The other is at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.

Neurosurgeon Mahmoud Kamel said treatment available to this specialty has greatly improved over the last decade. “(Updates are needed) almost every year,” he said. 

“There is always new equipment coming out and they are very expensive. There are advances in equipment all the time.” 

To give you one example, a surgical microscope which would be suitable for us costs about half a million, on average. That’s just one example.

It is not always practical for any public hospital to fully meet this demand now, he said.

“The charity money makes the difference because there is equipment that we don’t have resources for, and the only way to purchase this is through the kind donations of the people,” he said.

“I used to work in Scotland as a consultant for 11 years before coming here, and very advanced, updated equipment came through endowments and charity money.” 

There are four neurosurgeons in the Cork unit, he said. 

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“We cover the whole of the south of Ireland, so Waterford, Cork, Kerry and Limerick also, and for South Tipperary,” he said. “We are kept on the tip of our toes. We would operate every day, about three or four cases on average.” 

One of his former brain tumour patients, Patrick Foley living in Clashamore, Waterford, raised over €5,000 for the neurosurgery unit giving this to the CUH Charity in July. 

The charity recently raised €550,000 for an Ion Torrent Genexus Sequencer, this identifies the DNA profiles of cancer to help quickly determine treatment.

A four-year £1.4m study of the positive and problematic impacts of fundraising on the British health system opened in April 2020, led by the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Birmingham.