Ruddle statement - A painful insight into health crisis

COMING in the wake of the scathingly critical report into the untimely death of two-year-old Róisín Ruddle, whose lifesaving operation was postponed, today’s heart-rending statement from her parents should be made required reading at every hospital in the country.

Besides addressing fundamental questions that need to be asked in the interests of all ‘heart children’ and their parents, the Ruddles raise broader issues about the health service which are of profound importance.

Redolent of pain, the statement by Gerard Ruddle and Helen Quain-Ruddle chronicles a long litany of failings by a system which, they believe, contributed to their child’s death.

As in so many other cases, the crucial matter of funding was central to this tragedy. At one point, the Ruddles were informed by Crumlin Children’s Hospital that some intensive-care nurses were available from agencies if funding was made available. The reason given for postponing the operation was the lack of specialist nurses.

Faced with that scenario, parents up and down the country would have asked the same perplexing question.

“Could it be possible,” they asked, “that we lost our child for lack of funding? What had happened to us that things should go so badly wrong? We resolved to seek an independent inquiry.”

After the tragic story had broken in the media, the family went through the pain of being informed by a “parents’ support group” that things had improved as a result of what had happened. At the time, their little girl was not yet in her grave.

Every parent will live anew the Ruddle family’s mixture of grief and anger over their loss. As they state: “There was no consolation, only aggravated grief, when, a few hours after Róisín’s death, we were contacted by the hospital authorities to express their regret at her death and to further state ‘that her operation had been rescheduled for the following week’.”

The fact that she had been turned away without her operation left them with many unanswered questions surrounding her death in the summer of 2003.

Doubtless, the public will share their sense of anger at finding out in the very week when the panel of inquiry was set up by Health Minister Micheál Martin, that a Sunday paper published their child’s complete record of attendance at Crumlin hospital together with internal correspondence concerning representations made by the minister.

There can be no justification for such an appalling, insensitive and gross invasion of their privacy.

The palpable frustration and confusion of the family is manifest in the account of their desperate efforts to have Róisín’s name included on the surgery list over a three-month period while she struggled with her condition. At no time throughout that difficult period was contact initiated by the hospital.

Unconvinced by the reasons given for the delay, Róisín’s parents believe the waiting list must be a factor behind the series of cancellations and emergencies.

In what can only be described as a Third World scenario, they believe long car journeys over a five-day period between their Limerick home and the Dublin hospital, including a five-hour span when Róisín was strapped in her seat, were also a factor in her death.

The harrowing experience of the Ruddle family provides painful insights into this country’s shambles of a health service.

Let us hope the inquiry report, together with the courageous statement of Róisín’s parents, will bring about safer and better conditions in future both for heart children and their parents and for every hospital patient.