Neary Inquiry - Neary case must never happen again

HARD questions must be asked - and answered - in the aftermath of the scathing report on the misguided butchery of women under the guise of responsible medicine at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

It is simplistic to attribute what transpired there for 25 years to the prevailing culture of the medical profession at the time. For the chairman of the hospital’s current medical board to make such an assertion is unacceptable and overlooks the fact that Caesarian hysterectomies at the Co Louth maternity unit were 20 times the national average. It beggars belief that the activities of rogue obstetrician Michael Neary went unchecked for so long by his peers as he performed scores of unnecessary caesarean hysterectomies, effectively sterilising unwitting female patients, one of whom was aged only 19.

Until the late 1990s, when brave midwives highlighted his activities, the nuns who owned the hospital, its managers and consultants, the majority of doctors and nurses and the regional health board did nothing that might have prevented this butchery of women.