MINISTER FOR Health Mary Harney has ruled out a public inquiry into the foetal misdiagnosis issue, and has said that Ireland is still one of the safest places in the world to give birth.
Speaking in Galway yesterday, Ms Harney reiterated that a review of all the cases which occurred in the last five years was being put in place.
“Prof Michael Turner, a former master of the Coombe and one of the leading obstetricians in the country – a world-class obstetrician – made it clear that [a public inquiry] wouldn’t be appropriate, and that a five-year review was what should happen,” Ms Harney said.
“We have got to emphasise, of course, that with 80,000 pregnancies a year, this is still one of the safest places in the world to give birth. Ireland has a terrific record and I think we have to be mindful of that.”
Ms Harney was addressing a conference on men’s health at NUI Galway (NUIG) yesterday where she said it was notable that the voices of men are rarely heard in relation to health issues.
Men, she noted “do not like having those conversations”.
“Maybe it is not seen as the macho thing to do, and I don’t understand it, but we have to reach out to men,” she said.
Ms Harney said she believed a “targeted approach” was necessary, as outlined in the Government’s national strategy on men’s health published last year.
There was a need to tackle the higher incidence of suicide rates in men, particularly younger men, she said.
The new programme of colorectal screening was being rolled out over the next two years for both men and women, and the international norm for men was 50 per cent participation, Ms Harney said.
“This compares to a 70 per cent participation rate which we already have for women for BreastCheck,” she said. The colorectal programme involves self-screening, using a diagnostic kit, with subsequent medical follow-up if necessary.
Ms Harney said 6,000 people were alive in Ireland now due to early intervention with cardiovascular disease, and it was also important that there was early diagnosis of prostate cancer.
Cancer was a largely curable illness, and yet the main challenge lay in encouraging men to visit their GP. Farmers were an example of one largely-male professional group which was “not good at coming forward”, she said.
However, she paid tribute to the courage shown by former Fine Gael leader and health minister Michael Noonan in talking about his wife’s Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis, and RTÉ newscaster Michael Murphy who spoke of his own illness, and said that their courage “encouraged others to seek help”.
Referring to the debate about gender and health, which tended to apply only to women, Ms Harney said she came from a political party which “once wondered if it should have a gender quota for men”.