Sir, – I received the most extraordinary charity mail in the post recently.
The mail came in the form of a generic letter from the chief executive of the Mater Foundation, along with letters from a nurse and a sonographer, all addressed to “a fellow caring heart”. I received exactly the same mail in September this year.
The purpose of the letters is to ask for donations for a new ultrasound machine for the emergency department in the Mater hospital. These machines, the letters advise, cost €81,750, and the foundation has raised half that sum already.
The problem seems to be that, while there are ultrasound machines in the radiology department, late arrivals to the emergency department won’t get a same-day appointment in radiology, due to the high number of patients.
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This problem is worse at weekends and bank holidays, when radiology operates a reduced service.
All of this means that patients attending the Mater hospital with issues such as suspected blood clots or deep-vein thrombosis can’t get an ultrasound to diagnose their problem, except in the most critical emergencies.
The outcome is that every day (thousands per year), patients are sent home from the emergency department and told to come back when radiology has availability. In the meantime, these patients, often elderly or frail or in significant pain, have to travel back to the hospital every day to be given blood-thinning injections to reduce risk of stroke, pending diagnosis.
The letter advises that if the emergency department had an ultrasound machine, these wasteful, dangerous and below-standard circumstances would be “solved practically overnight”.
I understand that the outgoing Government has allocated a €25.8 billion budget for the delivery of health services in 2025. Can anyone please explain why, from this enormous budget, €40,000 cannot be found to buy this, clearly needed, basic hospital equipment?
The chief executive of the Mater Foundation makes an excellent case for the purchase of the machine on clinical, resource saving and patient-care grounds. What sort of Department of Health must we have where this sort of equipment is not provided for as standard, and the Mater Foundation must rely on donations to fund its most basic services? – Yours, etc,
WILLIAM MARTIN SMITH,
Terenure,
Dublin 6W.