Death report withheld - We need to know what HSE is hiding

WHY has it taken seven years to explain the death of an elderly woman choked to death by a restraint cord when sleeping in a hospital chair in the same room as a care assistant?

Unfortunately, the dysfunctional HSE, the state agency entrusted with management of Ireland’s health services (‘mismanagement’ might be a better term), refuses to release the findings of an independent investigation it ordered into the tragic case of 75-year-old Hannah Comber.

The seventh anniversary of her death came and went without being marked by its publication on Jun 21. It is an unmitigated disgrace that the facts relating to her demise are being withheld from the public. By any yardstick, this concealment speaks volumes about the HSE’s notorious disregard for the battered principles of transparency and accountability.

Hannah Comber died at the former Heatherside Hospital near Doneraile in North Cork, a facility run by the HSE which cared for people with a history of psychiatric problems. She had been put in a restraining chair with a belt around her waist, but having slipped down from the seat she was asphyxiated by the belt.

Hannah’s lonely death, without the comfort of relatives or friends around her, will send shivers down the spine of anyone with an elderly relative needing special care in a hospital or nursing home setting. In the face of repeated queries from the Irish Examiner about the investigation findings, the HSE’s stock response has been to claim it was ongoing. Now the organisation does not even bother to reply to such queries.

That it promised to publish the investigation report makes its attitude in the case of Hannah Comber all the more contemptuous. She had no immediate family to lobby in her cause. A niece is understood to live abroad. When she died, no photograph was published because none could be found.

The circumstances of her death appear to involve a classic case of failure in a system not fit for purpose. The Coroner’s Court heard that a number of nurses had contradicted statements they gave to gardaí investigating the matter. Not surprisingly, however, the many unanswered questions are now more valid than ever.

For example, does the HSE believe Ms Comber was so anonymous that she was not important enough to warrant publication of the independent report into the circumstances of her death? Why have repeated queries from the Irish Examiner been stonewalled? Was the outcome too revealing of the HSE to be published? Did a full investigation take place? Has it cost €100,000? Are there legal reasons behind its non-publication? Was the probe wound up prematurely? Why have its findings been suppressed? Is somebody sweeping something under the carpet? What is being covered up and why? These are some of the burning questions that Health Minister James Reilly should raise with the HSE on foot of a forthcoming Dáil request for information on why a report it had promised to put in the public gaze seven years ago is still being withheld. The minister has a bounden duty to tell people why this information has been suppressed. In Hannah Comber’s name and in the public interest, it is high time the truth came out.