Madam, - As someone who for the first time has had direct exposure to the health service for care following a recent diagnosis of illness, I read with growing alarm, anger and ultimately despair the almost daily reports of prospective HSE cutbacks.
Recently, these "policy options", as reported in your paper, have included reductions in beds, the closure of wards at weekends and/or over summer, and the curtailment of A&E services. In addition, since the beginning of the year there has been much media coverage of well-documented problems in areas as diverse as oncology, cystic fibrosis and stroke care. We are constantly being promised that improvements in these areas are "planned" or "under way". However, I wonder how this can be so at a time when such stringent cutbacks in basic front-line services appear to be necessary.
Moreover, these cuts come at a time when the HSE runs (presumably expensive) glib advertising campaigns on issues such as hospital cleanliness and the importance of mental health (another grossly under-resourced area). These campaigns should be seen for what they are - cosmetic PR exercises to reassure people that action is being taken, but which result in essentially nothing. It appears that the healthcare system increasingly priorities bureaucracy and finance rather than health, with numbers, budgets and "spin" taking precedence over real people and care.
Was Minister Harney's emotional response a while back to her job being on the line a case of mere crocodile tears? And when can we stop this pretence that all such decisions are out of the Government's hands as Ministers point instead at the HSE?
Who sets the budget for the HSE? Is there any Government accountability left in the area of healthcare? Does Brian Cowen's recent appeal to "patriotism" flow both ways? What of the State's duty of care to its more vulnerable citizens? And why, oh why, has this situation arisen after a decade of unprecedented economic growth? Truly, Ms Harney, it is enough to make one cry. - Yours, etc,
BARRY-JOHN McCANN, Rathmines, Dublin 6.