andMr. McQuillan asked the Minister for Health whether his attention has been drawn to a recent statement by a medical officer that six old persons admitted to hospital had died of cold; whether he has made further inquiries into the financial and other conditions of the dead persons' circumstances; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Deaths of Aged Persons.
7.
I presume the Deputies have in mind an article which appeared in the current issue of the Journal of the Irish Medical Association. If that is so, the Deputies paraphrase is incorrect.
The article related to the death of five, not six, of eight patients admitted to hospital. On admission, they were found to be suffering from a condition known as "accidental hypothermia". It is a tendentious gloss on the information contained in the article, and conveys an entirely misleading impression, to say, as the Deputies have said in the question, that they "died of cold". "Artificial hypothermia", I am advised, is a condition associated with faulty metabolism which, in turn, interferes with the right maintenance of body temperature. Further the condition is not necessarily, as is implied by the Deputies, associated with either poverty or neglect. Inquiries which I have made into the circumstances of the five patients who died indicate that in four of the cases the patients entered the hospital directly from homes where they had resided with, and been cared for, by married members of their own families. None had applied for home assistance as might be expected if poverty were a factor in their illness.
If, therefore, the question is based on the facts contained in the article to which I have referred, I feel that I should utter an emphatic protest against this attempt on the part of the two deputies concerned to distort the picture.
Incidentally, I think that the authors of the article, the two young doctors concerned, are to be congratulated on writing up these cases, thereby adding to the limited knowledge available regarding this condition.
Malnutrition.