Time for a new kind of approach - Baby deaths in Cavan

CONFIRMATION that four babies have died in 30 months at the maternity unit at Cavan General Hospital adds to the growing sense of unease around our health services, especially our maternity services. That it comes so very soon after relevations about five baby deaths at Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise exacerbates that concern.

That, in the Dáil yesterday, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin referred to internal HSE correspondence that admitted that numerous cases “as sad and as serious” as the Portlaoise deaths scandal have occured at “other sites around the country” begins to push the issue towards the national scandal category. That the HSE seems to have, on a matter of great public concern, wilfully adopted a policy of self-serving stonewalling and denial pushes these issues a good distance across the scandal red line.

That one of our national afflictions — the absence of accountability in vital public services — underpins both of these tragedies suggests that the time has come for a different kind of response. That assertion can be made despite all of the challenging issues around resources, as it seems that human failure was at the root of some of these avoidable deaths and the heartbreak they inflict on families.