Three patients have died so far this year while on a waiting list to be seen by a diabetes specialist at Dublin's Beaumont Hospital. The most recent death occurred within the past two weeks, it has emerged.
There are now 4,000 patients on the waiting list and they are waiting up to 14 months to be seen.
Earlier this year a consultant endocrinologist at the hospital, Dr Chris Thompson, warned he would have to stop adding the names of patients to the list unless extra staff were recruited to deal with those already waiting. Because the delay was so long, he said, those waiting were are at risk of developing blindness or kidney failure or losing a limb.
Yesterday Dr Thompson, who is also chairman of the Diabetes Federation of Ireland, confirmed the most recent death of a patient on the waiting list and said a 14- month wait was not safe. "It's very hard ethically to stand behind a list that long."
However, he said that since his original comments on the state of the waiting list in August, hospital management and the Eastern Regional Health Authority had promised to prioritise funding for the recruitment of additional specialist consultant and nursing staff.
He said it would be hard to say why these patients had died because they had not been seen, but it was concerning that people should die on a waiting list for something like diabetes.
The fact of the deaths came to light in this week's Irish Medical Times. About 5 per cent of the population suffers from diabetes, and the World Health Organisation expects the numbers worldwide to double by 2020.