A&E Crisis - Lie down and be counted

It may not have overshadowed the elaborate commemorative ceremonies planned for tomorrow’s marking of the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising, but the Lie Down And Be Counted protest delivered another apt message to the Government.

Outside the Dáil more than 100 people lay on the street, representing the record number of 495 patients who languished on hospital trolleys on a particular day last month, which was forty worse than the previous worst day.

The protest, which was supported by the Irish Nurses Organisation, was organised by Patients Together who are well-used holding vigils and delivering petitions to the Department of Health to highlight the misery of patients consigned to trolleys.

Perplexing though it be, the Government either cannot, or will not, once and for all come to grips with a problem that has persisted for years despite those protests.

Although the fact that the intolerable trolley issue has at last been recognised as a national emergency by the Government it persists, it seems, interminably.

The only response the Government makes is to draw up ten-point plans that are doomed to failure, while the Health Service Executive (HSE) sets up a taskforce, blames the vomiting bug or cold snaps.

Neither of the latter two are year-round problems, unlike the deplorable trolleys parked permanently on A&E corridors all over the country.

The latest response came from Angela Fitzgerald, chairwoman of the HSE’s new A&E taskforce. She described the crisis as their “biggest single priority” and to promise changes will be made in weeks and months to resolve it.

It is doubtful that this national emergency will be settled within a matter of months because it has been allowed to develop over years.

Coinciding with such an auspicious national occasion, yesterday’s demonstration outside the Dáil may impress upon the Government the fact that so many people are denied proper hospital care in such an unacceptable manner.