THE Southern Health Board said, yesterday that facilities in Cork, hospitals were adequate to cope with major disasters, either nuclear or chemical. It rejected claims that emergency service sin the city were underfunded and poorly designed.
In a statement last night, the board said Cork's Major Emergency Plan involved all the emergency services, including gardai, fire and ambulance services, and the accident and emergency departments of hospitals, each of which said its separate functions.
In Cork chemical accidents, were much more likely to occur, than nuclear ones, the statement went on, and added that each chemical company in the harbour area had its own decontamination procedure. "It is the major emergency policy worldwide that decontamination takes place at the scene of an accident."
Mr Stephen Cusack, a consultant at Cork University Hospital, "has claimed that neither its accident and emergency facilities, nor the other two in the city, were adequate to cope with a major nuclear or chemical disaster, even though Cork Harbour has the largest concentration of chemical plants in the Republic.
In a report to the Southern Health Board, Mr Cusack said existing accident and emergency services were not adequate in terms of size or design to cope with a major emergency. He called for immediate funding to improve the infrastructure.
In its statement, the board added "In the unlikely event of a nuclear accident, Cork University Hospital has equipment specially designed to monitor and measure radioactive contamination, including thyroid uptake."