I thank you, Sir, for allowing me to raise this matter and I would like to advise that I intend to share my time with my colleague, Deputy Nuala Fennell.
Adjournment Debate. - Kidney Operation.
Is that satisfactory? Agreed.
It was with some sadness I felt I had to come into the House to raise this issue because I believe a child who requires urgent medical care should not have to have his or her difficulties raised in this House in order to receive that care. I am raising this matter with you, Sir, today as a result of an urgent intervention on the part of this child's general practitioner who is greatly concerned as to the future wellbeing of this child if urgent hospital treatment is not provided forthwith.
The child I speak of is one Christopher Geraghty who lives in my constituency, was born in August 1988 and is now one and a half years of age. This little boy has been unwell for some time. He has been under the medical care of his general practitioner and a specialist. He suffers from a gross reflux in his kidneys and the effect of this is that the functioning of the left kidney is virtually at an end. I am not a doctor but the doctor has advised me that his left kidney is now functioning at 8 per cent of what should be a proper functioning kidney. I am also advised that the condition of the left kidney is now impacting on the child's right kidney and that the specialist caring for the child adjudged that the time had come for necessary surgery to have this child's left kidney removed.
It was arranged that on 28 January the child would be admitted to Temple Street Hospital so that the necessary surgery could be carried out. I am told that at the last minute admittance was cancelled because there was not a bed available. When I say there was not a be available I mean there was not a bed available in the context of the beds the hospital is currently authorised to use. I understand there are other beds that are not in use at present and which could be made available. This postponement of surgery was said to be for only two weeks. It was indicated to the parents that necessary surgery would take place and the child would be admitted on 12 February, that is Monday of this week. On Monday the child's surgical operation was again cancelled because, the parents were told, no bed was available.
I have been in contact with the general practitioner. I have talked to the child's mother. I am advised that as matters stood at 12.45 p.m. today, the parents still did not know when their child will be admitted to hospital. At 12.45 p.m. today they did not know whether a bed would be made available. This morning it was repeated to me in discussions that if surgery was further delayed this could have a very serious impact on the functioning kidney which could have very serious long term repercussions for the child. In the circumstances I felt it only appropriate to raise this matter in this House. I felt it was not a matter that could be dealt with simply by writing a letter to the Minister or by some communication to his Department which would get lost in the bureaucracy of the Department for a number of weeks.
It is my belief that it should not be necessary to raise a matter of this nature in this House. Members on this side of the House have been constantly accused by the Minister of scaremongering, but I talked today to a very scared mother who had talked to no politicians and whose general practitioner was so concerned that he felt the need to communicatie with a number of Members of this House about her concerns with regard to her patient.
This child should be admitted as a matter of urgency as a public patient to Temple Street Hospital. I want the Minister to confirm to us today in this House that arrangements will be made for such admittance. If his parents were in a financial position to pay for private medical care this child would have a bed in the Blackrock Clinic or the Mater Private Clinic. It is not right that we have a two tier medical service which in its operation is placing the life and wellbeing of a child, and of other children at risk. We need a rational, ordered hospital care system. Beds should be available on an organised basis. Public patients should not be treated differently from private patients.
In concluding to allow my colleague to come in I do not want anything I have said to be regarded as a criticism of any of the doctors involved. I understand the doctors have done everything they can to be of assistance to this child. What is required is that a bed be made available, and the child be given hospitalisation so that an operation can be performed on the disfunctioning kidney so that his health can be restored. I hope this is the last occasion in my political life that I will have to bring a matter of this nature to the notice of this House.
I thank you, Sir, for allowing this matter to be raised on the Adjournment. I thank my colleague, Deputy Shatter, for giving me a share in his time, and I thank the Minister of State for coming in to hear it. I regret that the Minister for Health is not here because this classically illustrates the difficulties we know exist in health care.
This case is serious. It is damning on our system of health care in that it leaves one baby boy without an essential operation, a decision that appears callous and uncaring, whoever made it. It begs another question. How many other baby Geraghtys are there whose parents are being treated like this but who have not the energy or determination to make contact indirectly, as these parents did, with their TDs because they feel it would make no difference anyway and they are probably ground down by their efforts to get justice and fair treatment?
The doctor in Dublin South who brought this case to our notice did not relish being political. She told me her job is to cure people, to administer to them, not to run political clinics, but she realised her responsibility in this case meant she had to go further and get in touch with us. This child's condition is deteriorating, as Deputy Shatter said. If his kidney is not removed now the second one will become infected and that would mean he would be in need of a kidney transplant.
When I got the letter today I phoned the Department of Health to seek information and assurance for this little boy. I was told the decision to admit him was taken by the consultant. The Department told me that the consultant for his own reasons made the decision not to admit him. This is not so. The consultant says his decision was that the child should have been admitted, as was illustrated by Deputy Shatter, on two occasions but a decision to cancel the bed was taken by a third party in the admissions office.
Where is the truth? Who is running the hospitals? Do the consultant's wishes count for anything, or are they made merely to be overruled by some non-medical bureaucrats who do not fully understand the problems?
This is a real case. It is not fiction, which we on this side of the House have been accused of concocting. It is like the hundreds of other real cases we heard during the debate on health last week. Like Deputy Shatter, I would prefer not to have to come in here angry and saddened discussing cases like this. It gives me no pleasure and I am sure it gives the GP in question no pleasure. She would prefer not to have to go political. I am quite sure the child's parents would much prefer that their child would get treatment as a matter of course without having to go through the endless rounds they have had to go through. I ask the Minister to give us an assurance not only that this little boy will get the attention he needs but that the system will attempt to operate in the interests of patients like this and that the many other patients, whether children or adults, who are being treated like this will have some means of redress and that they can make their case known——
The Deputy might bring her speech to a conclusion.
——to somebody in the Department, because this is something that needs to come up again and again. This is not the way we should run our hospital services.
Arrangements were made in early January that the child in question would be admitted on 29 January last. Unfortunately, this was not possible due to a shortage of threatre staff at the hospital, even though a bed was available for the child. This shortage was not caused by any lack of financial resources and the hospital are presently in the process of recruiting more theatre nurses.
A further admission date of 12 February was fixed but had to be postponed due to an exceptionally high demand for beds at the hospital at that time. It was most unfortunate that this second admission date could not be met. The hospital has now given the patient a new admission date of next Tuesday week, 27 February 1990. These postponements have been most unfortunate and both the Minister for Health and myself deplore the situation. There is no question that a bed will not be made available for the patient. The Minister for Health is fully aware of the situation and, were it not for prior appointments, he would be here this evening to deal with this matter.
I would like to assure Deputies that there is no significant problem with the waiting list in regard to admissions to surgical beds at Temple Street Hospital. This patient has been the unfortunate victim of coincidence and his experience does not reflect the general situation. The in-patient waiting list for surgery at Temple Street Hospital is in fact from only two to four weeks. There would normally be no difficulty in this case. As I have said, it is a most unfortunate incident and does not reflect the true position of surgery at the hospital. In 1989, 2,064 paediatric surgery cases were admitted to the hospital. I would like to let the House know that the Minister for Health has always been very concerned to ensure that Temple Street Hospital is provided with as much money as possible from within the available resources to improve its services. Last year we provided £7.9 million to Temple Street Hospital. In addition we allocated an additional provision of £250,000 from the special extra allocation of £15 million for improvements in the health services made in July last. This year we have allocated £8.5 million to Temple Street Hospital and this is an increase of £600,000 on the allocation for 1989. Temple Street Hospital is now operating at a much higher level of activity than at any other time over the past few years. At present it has a complement of 140 beds. In 1989, Temple Street Hospital treated over 7,000 in-patients, 2,500 day cases and also looked after approximately 40,000 out-patients. This is a very significant level of activity and this will be maintained throughout 1990.
The Minister for Health is totally dissatisfied with the information made available by the hospital and a medical officer from the Department of Health will visit Temple Street Hospital tomorrow. If the surgeon treating the child feels it is urgent that the child should have an immediate operation, the hospital management will arrange to have the child admitted immediately.