Two kidney specialists in the southeast have called on the HSE to "immediately" avail of the services of a dialysis clinic in Kilkenny which has lain idle since January despite a chronic shortage of renal dialysis services throughout the region.
Dr Seán Leavey and Dr Frank Walker, consultant nephrologists at Waterford Regional Hospital, said capacity problems at the hospital mean "a large group of often quite elderly renal patients" are forced to undergo dialysis treatment commencing after midnight three times a week.
Each session can last up to four hours and many of the patients also have to travel long distances to and from the hospital. Another estimated 30 patients from the region are forced to travel to Dublin three times a week to be treated in both public hospitals and a private clinic.
In a statement to The Irish Times, the doctors said: "As patient care advocates, we feel a responsibility to highlight the immediacy of this need. There is a facility that can presently treat patients in Kilkenny. If, even only on an interim basis, it is possible to engage these services locally, then we believe it is in the best interests of patients that it should be availed of immediately."
Irish company PEI Ltd, which built the Kilkenny clinic, was told last week that its tender to provide additional dialysis services for the southeast was not successful.
Fine Gael's spokesman on enterprise, trade and employment, Phil Hogan TD, yesterday called for an investigation by Minister for Health Mary Harney into the decision by the health executive not to use the Kilkenny clinic, but to instead appoint "a German-based firm which as yet hasn't even a premises to operate from".
However, the executive confirmed that it could not announce the name of the winning service provider until an unspecified "cooling-off period" had elapsed.
The Carlow-Kilkenny deputy said he "deplored" the fact that 27 renal patients in his constituency "who could have availed of this service, were having to travel to Dublin or Waterford for dialysis while a fully staffed clinic is available locally".
