Health service - Lack of surgeons not acceptable

SPECIALIST medical services outside Dublin are so thinly spread that the retirement of one consultant can bring the system to a halt, forcing infants to go to the capital for surgery.

Yet another example of this unsatisfactory scenario has emerged following the retirement of the only surgeon in the south of the country with the skills to operate on babies born with certain birth defects.

As a result, from Cork and Kerry to Carlow and Kilkenny, newborn babies have to be taken to Dublin for operations on defects such as club foot or congenital hip dislocation. Since April, when the surgeon in question retired on health grounds, children needing other specialised orthopaedic surgery are also compelled to go to Dublin.