Laughter won’t be the best cure
Unfortunately, over the last year, I’ve had to spend a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms. They are drab and dreary places which is understandable considering that it’s full of the sick and injured. However there’s a few obvious things that become noticeable to those who have to spend more time there then they’d care to .
Firstly I have to start off with a positive note, it’ll be a rare thing in this article, despite the fact that hospital staff (particularly in the Accident & Emergency) are overworked and underpaid they do great work. One particular doctor, who I spoke with last night, looked out on his feet but dealt with our concerns precisely and in exactly the right manner. I have a lot of sympathy for what Doctors and Nurses have to put up with.
It annoys me that Ireland is offered a , third rate, third world healthcare system that is served up to us by a government who take the attitude that we have never had it so good.
In 2001, according to Sara Burke’s ‘Addressing the Healthcare crisis’ report, this country was promised 3000 more beds in hospitals and as of 2005 had received only 724. You do not need to be the Minister for Finance to work out that this is painfully short of the promise made.
Also by December 2006, 15,096 adults were waiting for surgical procedures with a further 4,425 waiting on medical procedures. It’s staggering to me that any government could even contemplate running a country in this way but even more so that Ireland is among the countries with the highest income per capita in the EU. We’re not a war torn nation but we are treated like one.
Irishhealth.com’s recent poll shows that 10% of people are prepared to wait up to 6 hours to be seen in the Accident and Emergency department, 90% stated (quite rightly) that this wasn’t good enough.
In November 2006, Former Health Minister, Mary Harney announced that a further €1.1 billion would be spent in 2007 bringing it to a total of €14.5 billion. This roughly works out at €3,300 per person and I can tell you that if it’s to be the case it’s not money well spent.
You can’t just throw money at a problem and hope it all goes away. If it were that easy poverty around the world would cease to exist. Fianna Fail has increased it’s spending on the health service by three fold since 1997, which would be congratulated had there not been so many cutbacks in the 1980’s.
Burke also found that in 1981, with a population of 3.4 million people, Ireland had 17,668 acute beds, a ratio of 5.13 per 1000. However, by the year 2000 there were just 11,891 beds available to a population of 3.8 million, a ratio of 3.14 per 1000.
The worst thing about all of this is after all these shortcomings, not just in health, Fianna Fail still gets elected this year to run the country, by a huge majority, but then maybe the old saying is right and that we do get the government we deserve.
Perhaps Bono should be campaigning for Ireland’s health service rather then an end to African poverty.
Monday, July 16th, 2007 and is filed under Views on News.
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