Call for 'partnership' to improve health service

A WELL-FUNCTIONING health service could be run within budget – even allowing for repayments on the EU-IMF bailout – if the Government shares control of services it provides with the communities they serve, a health policy expert said yesterday.

Dr Fergus O’Ferrall, lecturer in health policy at Trinity College Dublin, said “equal partnerships” between government and the voluntary sector could avoid much of the poor health in communities, such as alcohol dependency and obesity.

He said there were many instances where a population’s general health did not depend on economic growth or income. He said health policy was not only about treatment for people with, for example diabetes, but about generating good health through empowering individuals to be well nourished, and to have the ability to seek good health. In 2010 he said there were 3.5 million attendances at outpatient departments and 1.1 million people attended 33 emergency departments. “Are we a sick society and getting sicker?” he asked. He said people in Roscommon were prepared to protest outside the Dáil because they did not have faith in the current “corrupt” centralised health system.

He said factors that contribute to good health go well beyond distribution of healthcare and involve social justice and individual confidence, decision-making ability, skills and personal responsibility.

But he warned: “There are people in this society who have a stokehole in this dysfunction and they are not going to give up.”

Dr O’Ferrall was speaking at a conference organised by The Wheel, a support and representative body for community, voluntary and charitable organisations,

Deirdre Garvey, chief executive of The Wheel, said charitable and voluntary groups wanted to contribute more to improving the lives of people “by participating in transforming our health and social services”.

Minister of State for Public Service Reform Brian Hayes said a closer relationship between health providers, the voluntary sector and the individual needed to be developed.