Sir, – The closing paragraph of your editorial “The Irish Times view on the national children’s hospital: a project cloaked in secrecy” (June 25th) states that the new children’s hospital will not add greatly to the number of beds but will give single rooms to all patients. The brief mention of healthcare in this same paragraph along with bed spaces and single occupancy gives the impression that the improvement expected in children’s healthcare will be down to the rooms.
While it is very important that our children are given the protection of single rooms against cross-infection and allowing some dignity when they are seriously ill, this is not the major benefit implied in your editorial, although it will allow parents stay with their beloved children on a bed instead of on the floor, sometimes with another unknown parent beside them.
The transformation mentioned briefly is the biggest improvement, life-changing for anyone who has had the misfortune to have a seriously ill child and experience the completely unacceptable facilities in our paediatric hospitals. All the international medical expertise has stated from the outset that Ireland has a compromised healthcare system for children if there is more than one paediatric hospital for less than five million people. We are not looking after the best interests of our most vulnerable children without opening the new hospital and by implication allowing less than ideal practice for our children.
The medical benefits that were identified by McKinsey for their report into paediatric services in Ireland were very clear about the need for a single tertiary hospital located on a site co-located with an adult teaching hospital. What is often missed in the media is that this hospital will be for complex serious illness and not for the everyday broken limbs, etc. It is the treatment of these complex diseases that will benefit most from the new hospital. The Pollock report 2002 which focussed on the seriously outdated and dangerous facilities at Crumlin also identified the failings and Dr Pollock subsequently stated that the improvements would be immeasurable if the new hospital was achieved.
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The medical benefits of the new children’s hospital are the real gains for our children. We in the New Crumlin Hospital Group who have been lobbying since 2002 are keenly aware of costs and timelines but when it comes to the lives of our most vulnerable children and the emotional well being of their parents, is there not a bigger picture to consider? By all means costs and timeframes should be challenged but let’s not lose sight of what we are trying to achieve. We need Ireland to come on board to support this great project and try to improve the plight of some of our most vulnerable children.
Twenty-one years later and we are nearly there. Unfortunately too late for the parents and children of our group but is this not a much bigger issue for Ireland? – Yours, etc,
LOUIS RODEN,
Chairman,
New Crumlin
Hospital Group,
Dublin 6.