Cancer services - People die as Government dithers

THERE are about 11,000 cancer deaths in this country each year and more than 19,000 new cases annually. The number of people suffering from cancer is expected to grow and will be 41% up on the 1993 figure by 2015.

This will involve a major increase in the number of people requiring oncology treatment for skin, prostate, lung and breast cancers.

In 1993, a breast screening service was introduced in Northern Ireland and the death rate from breast cancer has been cut by over 20%.

The BreastCheck scheme was introduced in Dublin and the east of Ireland, with equally positive results, but the scheme will not be rolled out in the rest of the country until 2007.

This delay is costing the lives of 65 women each year. Figures indicate that 325 women have died unnecessarily and that death toll is likely to grow to more than 450 by the end of next year. This is an outrageous indictment of the ineptitude and indifference of successive governments.

If any Government stood by and allowed 65 women to be taken out and killed there would be outrage. It would probably being down that Government.

Yet, the 65 women who would be saved this year, if the BreastCheck scheme was in place, will have gone through a horrific ordeal and their families will have had to endure the agony of watching their loved ones suffer.

This country has one of the highest rates of cervical cancer. Yet there is no indication of any intention to introduce national screening, which could save many lives by early detection.

The problem in dealing with the various forms of cancer is not just a lack of services; the primitive conditions in which services are sometimes provided are also a problem.

The so-called six-bed cancer bay at Waterford Regional Hospital has no beds at all. It did once have comfortable reclining chairs, but those have since been replaced with hardback chairs to make room for more patients to be treated there daily.

The Government has been breaking its own guidelines in relation to the provision of dedicated wards for chemotherapy patients. Neither Cork University Hospital nor Waterford Regional Hospital has dedicated in-patient cancer wards to provide a safe environment for complex life-threatening treatment.

Patients whose immune systems are compromised by their treatment are recklessly being put into wards along with highly infectious patients.

It is an outrage that the most vulnerable people are being put at risk. This is both inhuman and unChristian. Moreover, it is unfair to everyone involved - the cancer patients, the other patients and the staff.

One consultant at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick - where facilities are better, due to the generosity and fundraising of the prominent business people who established the Mid-Western Hospital Development Trust - has stated that conditions there are similar to what they were 15 to 20 years ago when he was working in Britain.

For a country that has been at the forefront of medical and technological advances during the past decade and a half, this is an intolerable situation. We don’t lack the means, but the Government lacks the will.

As it dithers, people are dying.