Monaghan hospital campaigners called last night for an investigation into the death of a man at the hospital a day after attempts to transfer him to three other hospitals for urgent surgery failed.
The 70-year-old man presented at Monaghan hospital on Thursday with a bleeding ulcer, and because the hospital is not allowed to carry out emergency surgery, it attempted to transfer him to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, where he had undergone previous surgery.
Our Lady of Lourdes had no intensive care bed available and suggested the patient be sent to Cavan General Hospital. However Cavan had no intensive care bed available either and could not accept him.
Staff at Monaghan hospital rang Drogheda again to no avail and then tried Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, but its intensive-care beds were also full.
The patient continued to bleed and despite being transfused with several units of blood at Monaghan hospital, died there early yesterday.
The Monaghan Hospital Community Alliance said last night the circumstances of the man's death should be investigated. Spokesman Peadar McMahon said the rules meant staff at the hospital were unable to perform a procedure that could possibly have saved his life.
Mr McMahon and local GP Dr Illona Duffy, who have been campaigning for emergency surgery to be restored to Monaghan hospital, met Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Castleblayney last night and appealed to him to do whatever he could to ensure this happened.
Mr McMahon said the Taoiseach seemed "very disturbed" when told about this latest death in Monaghan.
"We gathered from him that he will get somebody to talk to Prof Brendan Drumm [ chief executive of the Health Service Executive] about it," he said.
Dr Duffy said, in her opinion, if the 70-year-old man could have been operated on in Monaghan, his life could have been saved. "If nobody had a bed for him he should have been able to have been operated on in Monaghan to give him a fighting chance."
A number of consultant surgeons in the northeast recently wrote to the HSE appealing for Monaghan hospital to be put back on call for emergency surgery to take pressure off Cavan hospital. The HSE said this was not possible.
Yesterday's death in Monaghan is one of several which have being attributed to loss of services at Monaghan Hospital.
The most high-profile of these was the death of baby Bronagh Livingstone in December 200 within hours of her mother being forced to give birth to her in an ambulance on the way to Cavan hospital.