Health chaos – Martin must do all he can to cure ills

HEALTH Minister Micheál Martin deserves the accolades that he has received for having the courage to implement the smoking ban. This has attracted enormous international attention, as other countries evaluate the implications of the ban here.

The minister was not just brave but also lucky. He has already had one high-profiled political scalp delivered to him on a figurative platter. John Deasy was fired this week as Fine Gael spokesman on justice for defying the smoking ban in the Dáil bar.

It will take some time for the real benefits of the ban to become apparent, but it should inevitably have a beneficial impact on the health of future generations of Irish people.

Right now, the minister has an opportunity to build on his political success by taking a proactive approach to other glaring problems in the health service.

He cannot afford to sit back as hospital and health officials play medical politics by passing off their problems by transferring patients as if it were a game of pass-the-parcel.

Whether the patient at the centre of the growing row over Dublin's Peamount Hospital is an illegal immigrant or not, he is clearly ill with tuberculosis, a highly infectious disease that was the scourge of this country within living memory.

Both common sense and human compassion dictate that such a patient should get the best medical care, not only for his own sake, but also for the health of the community at large.

It was perversely ironic that the Minister for Finance had no difficulty in providing more than €14 million for the events centre at Punchestown. He was able to show off those facilities to his fellow EU finance ministers yesterday with some effect.

For all of the questions that may be raised about the financing of the project, the facilities themselves are something of which this country can be proud, if only as proof of what we can do.

Ultimately, it provides a glaring backdrop against which the injustices of our health services should be highlighted.

We should be ashamed that sick and elderly patients are being kept in chairs or trolleys for hours and even days in overcrowded and dangerous conditions in accident and emergency rooms, because there are no hospital beds available due to financial cutbacks.

Forcing seriously-ill patients to remain in the kind of conditions described in one of today's letters is not just degrading; it is dangerous and inhuman.

Compelling doctors and nurses to work under such harrowing conditions is also grossly unfair and certainly not conducive to best medical practices.

This poses a real challenge to Mr Martin a challenge to help that generation on whose sacrifices the present prosperity was built.

We owe it to them; we must insist that they get the care they deserve.