Vol. 431 No. 8
128 Mr. J. Higgins asked the Minister for Health the reason for the delay in providing the necessary cataract operation for a person (details supplied) in County Mayo living on her own who is totally blind in one eye and has very defective eyesight in the other; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
The position is that the patient in question is on the waiting list for cataract surgery but the Western Health Board is unable to provide an exact admission for her at the moment. The Deputy will appreciate that the admission of a patient to hospital for treatment is a matter for the consultant concerned and urgent cases are always accorded priority. Should the patient feel that her condition has deteriorated, she should return to her general practitioner who would be in the best position to stress the urgency of the case directly to the consultant.
The Deputy will be aware of the £20 million major action programme which I recently launched in relation to hospital in-patient waiting lists which was specifically targeted at those areas of hospital treatment where long waiting times are causing the greatest hardship. These areas include ophthalmology, cataracts and other procedures, where the aim is to eliminate waiting lists in excess of 12 months. The necessary funds are being made available to the Western Health Board to perform an additional 250 cataract operations under this programme in 1993. This should impact significantly on the average waiting times for cataract operations.
