Survivors accuse HSE of blocking treatment for women with mesh implants

Women injured by vaginal mesh implants are being prevented from having them fully removed by doctors who inserted them and by the Health Service Executive (HSE), an Oireachtas committee heard on Wednesday.

Groups representing more than 600 women whose lives have been “turned upside down” by the implants — used in the past to treat stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse — said members continued to be “gaslit”, told they are imagining their symptoms and denied the full range of treatment options they need.

Terri Martin, co-ordinator of Mesh Survivors Ireland — which has more than 500 members — said many women with debilitating symptoms including constant infections, bleeding, incontinence, mesh erosion into organs and the vagina, chronic pain, loss of mobility and mental health problems, did not even know they had meshes inside them as they were not told. She called for a publicity campaign about mesh injury so women “could at least ask the right questions”.

Despite several reports and committees, “nothing has changed for the women and we still live with the after-effects”.

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“If I hear now that a consultant has said, ‘Your problem is not the mesh’ I think to myself, ‘Do you have the credentials to hold this job?’ We trusted the doctors who were supposed to help us.”

In 2018, the then chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan ordered a pause on the procedure amid international concerns about significant harms to a minority of women.

Mary McLoughlin, co-ordinator of Mesh Ireland which has 150 members, said women were leaving the country to access full mesh removal, at their own expense. Full mesh removal was “better” than partial removal. It was extremely complex and required a “high skillset” which is not available in Ireland, she said.

[ Vaginal mesh injury: ‘I really thought I was going to die’ ]

Women who sought support from the HSE’s treatment abroad scheme (TAS) to access full removal abroad, however, were sent on a “fool’s errand”, according to Ms McLoughlin. Applicants for the TAS must show the procedure is not available in Ireland and must have a consultant’s referral.

“The TAS is illusory,” she said. “The HSE’s position is that these surgeries are available in Ireland. We dispute this.”

The committee heard later from obstetrician gynaecologist, Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan, who treats mesh-injured women at Cork University Maternity Hospital. She said full mesh-removal surgery could “mutilate” a woman.

“Often total mesh removal, from my clinical perspective, may not be in the best interests of the patient,” she said.

“We look after women who have come back from abroad who have had full mesh removal and had very significant problems, [are] really harmed and have dreadful complications.”

Asked how many women she had seen with problems after a full mesh removal, she said she had seen one since 2018. As to whether there was “pushback” from the medical community against facilitating full mesh removal she said: “Women come wanting the mesh completely removed but if I, as a clinician, am fairly confident it won’t make their problem any better and might make things an awful lot worse, I can’t recommend what I think is big and potentially mutilating surgery, I just can’t do that. It’s not pushback.”

Dr Cliona Murphy, clinical lead for the HSE’s National Women and Infants Health Programme, was asked how many women have had mesh implants; how many had complications, and how many had had them partially removed. She was unable to answer these questions.

Róisín Shortall TD, of the Social Democrats said: “These are procedures that were carried out on people in the HSE and you can’t tell us the numbers. This is just extraordinary.”

Catherine Donohoe, manager of the TAS, said just two women had been approved since 2018 to travel abroad for mesh removal.