THE HEALTH Service Executive (HSE) has been urged to make extra beds available for patients with acquired brain injuries and decentralise some of these beds by establishing a section of the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) in Cork to service patients in the south of the country.
The call has come from Cork North Central Labour TD and spokeswoman on Equality Kathleen Lynch, who said that she and other public representatives in the south of the country are regularly approached by the families of people with brain acquired injuries seeking support and assistance.
Ms Lynch said some years ago, a great deal of preparatory work was done to facilitate transferring a section of the NRH in Dún Laoghaire to Cork with a site being identified in the grounds of St Mary's Orthopaedic Hospital in Gurranabraher in the city.
"Unfortunately, the plan came to nothing. Yet, not a week goes by without public representatives in the southern region receiving phone calls from the parents, wives or siblings of someone who has acquired a brain injury and needs to be in the NRH," she said.
"At present there is only one rehabilitation hospital in the country for those who suffer brain damage and this has only 110 beds. Early treatment is critical in terms of helping people with brain injury to walk or talk again," she said.
"Anything beyond a two-week delay in treating someone with this type of injury is unacceptable, but in this region some patients have to wait two years for treatment because we only have the hospital capacity to treat a quarter of the 10,000 people who acquire a brain injury every year."
In May 2001, the then minister for health Micheál Martin told Fine Gael's Jimmy Deenihan in the Dáil that a rehabilitation unit was part of the brief given to a team appointed to prepare a £25 million development of St Mary's Orthopaedic.
The HSE confirmed this in a statement to The Irish Times this week, saying that development proposals for an acute unit on the site of St Mary's were developed in 2000 and a strategy document was later prepared and submitted in 2003.
However, it said there was no date or schedule available yet for this development.