Dismay over breast services transfer

WE have learned with dismay of the proposed transfer of symptomatic breast services from Mayo General Hospital to University College Hospital Galway (UCHG), which is to be 90% completed by the end of 2009.

Government policy with regard to the delivery of cancer services, issued on September 27, 2007, stated that eight cancer centres would be developed nationally. In the west, this centre was to be based in Galway.

Instructions were issued to a number of named hospitals (Portiuncula, Ballinasloe and Roscommon) to cease breast surgery immediately. Mayo General Hospital was not one of these hospitals and so, we ask, who made this decision?

Have the population figures really been thought out and will UCHG be able to cope with the increased workload?

We agree that, for best practice in terms of patient survival and outcome from treatment, specialist centres are needed, but over the past six years Mayo has worked hard with Galway to deliver symptomatic breast services as part of a managed network, with 86 patients treated in Mayo so far this year.

Is it reasonable or fair to ask a woman from Bangor-erris or Belmullet to travel to Galway for a service she should be able to avail of in her own county?

More than €250,000 was raised by the people of Mayo for equipment for the breast unit. What are the plans for it or is it to remain forgotten and abandoned, as the women of Mayo have been?

Emer O’Byrne

Irish Practice

Nurses Association

42 Fr Griffin Rd

Galway