MALLOW:LIVES WILL be lost if a decision to close the emergency department at Mallow General Hospital in Co Cork is not reversed it was claimed at a protest outside the facility yesterday.
Mallow’s emergency department will be replaced with an “urgent care centre” from November. The care centre will be open 12 hours a day seven days a week. All major trauma incidents will be referred, from November, to Cork University Hospital.
The urgent care unit and medical assessment unit will deal with minor incidents where members of the public are likely to receive a full medical discharge. The Health Service Executive says a team of advanced paramedics, similar to the response unit in West Cork, will be installed in North Cork later this year.
Sinn Féin TD in Cork East, Sandra McLellan, said the 100,000 people living in the catchment area plan to fight any move to downgrade services at the hospital. She also called on local Government TDs to exercise their influence to prevent the closure of the emergency department.
“They [Government TDs] have acknowledged in the past that to downgrade A&E services will only force people to an already overcrowded Cork University Hospital, but now they say this move is in the interest of safety. This is absolute nonsense.”
A number of hospital patients left their wards yesterday to join in the protest. Joe Crowley, from Mitchelstown, Co Cork, who is being treated at the hospital, said he came outside to show solidarity with the hard-working nurses and doctors at the facilty.
Large crowds attended yesterday’s protest in Mallow which was organised by local Sinn Féin representatives. Last week the HSE said it had identified 10 hospitals where significant risks had arisen in relation to matters raised in reports from the health safety body Hiqa. The HSE told the Dáil Committee of Public Accounts that the 10 hospitals were: Our Lady’s hospitals in Navan, Dundalk, Portlaoise; St Columcille’s in Loughlinstown, Dublin; Mallow general and Bantry general, in Cork; Ennis general and Nenagh general, in Clare; St John’s in Limerick and Roscommon County.
A small protest took place outside Loughlinstown hospital in what one of the organisers said was an act of solidarity with the people of Roscommon.
The protest, organised by local Sinn Féin councillor John Brady, was only attended by about 20 people but comes after a weekend protest attended by several hundred residents concerned at proposals to downgrade its AE unit.
Mr Brady said Loughlinstown hospital’s A&E served 160,000 people in south Co Dublin and Wicklow and treated 21,000 patients last year. He warned that if it was scaled back patients would have to go to St Vincent’s hospital which he said was already over capacity.