Savita report - Deadly failures

The Health Information Quality Authority (Hiqa) report is an appalling indictment of the failure to implement a safe infrastructure over a number of years. The authority emphasised that the medics missed 13 chances to save the life of Savita Halappanavar.

Hiqa also warned that it is unable to stand over the safety standards in Ireland’s 19 maternity services, due to the failure to implement previous improvements considered necessary. It is an outrage that it has taken the deaths of Tania McCabe, Bimbo Onanuga, and Mrs Halappanavar to highlight these deadly inefficiencies.

People wished to be reassured that the measures to cope with such mistakes will be vigorously implemented, but it is hard to have any confidence when Dr Peter Boylan, the clinical director of the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street, Dublin, stated so categorically that he does not believe the promises of the health minister, or the HSE.