Sir, – Congratulations to Prof Luke O’Neill and his Opsona colleagues for their wonderful new technology improving transplant organ survival (Business + Innovation, May 6th). The authors correctly deduce that this will dramatically increase the number of potential organs suitable for kidney transplant.
However, there are currently more than 600 people on the waiting list for living, related-donor kidney transplants at Beaumont hospital. This is a result of a lack of prioritisation, unavailable theatre space and an infestation of aspergillus fungus on key wards.
The doctors and surgeons involved have raised this at national level, only to be told by our Minister for Health to sort this out themselves. Therefore, all that Opsona’s new therapies will achieve is a further lengthening of the queue. This intolerable situation is an affront to all those brave and generous organ donors and vulnerable dialysis patients. – Yours, etc,
Dr PAUL MacMULLAN,
Medical Registrar,
Beaumont Hospital, Dublin 9.