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11/06/2002
Tyrone County hospital set to lose acute services
Local assembly members have expressed their concern over the proposal to remove acute and life saving emergency services from Tyrone County Hospital.
The proposals, as recommended in the Hayes Report, are expected to be endorsed by the Health Minister Bairbre de Brún tomorrow in a consultation document.
Last summer the taskforce appointed to review Northern Ireland’s acute hospitals under Dr Maurice Hayes advised streamlining theses services into nine main hospitals – thus downgrading seven of the province’s remaining smaller hospitals.
As such, it is this proposed removal of accident and emergency and maternity services from local hospitals which is causing most controversy.
Joe Byrne SDLP assembly member for West Tyrone said he found reports that Bairbre de Brún was standing by Hayes’ recommendations was “very disturbing”.
“The reported position of the Health minister on acute services would leave the county of Tyrone without any meaningful acute hospital services.
“The ultimate test is the sincerity of the Minister and her department to deliver hospital services to both rural and urban communities in an equitable way. The continual uncertainty about hospital services in Tyrone is causing undue pain and misery to both health care professionals and patients.”
Many of the hundreds of casualties of the 1998 Omagh bomb were treated in the Tyrone County hospital in Omagh immediately after the blast.
Mr Byrne said that the recommendation to locate the new hospital near Enniskillen would leave the people of Tyrone with a third rate health service. He added the Enniskillen proposed site would serve a population of only 90,000, leaving Tyrone a county with a population approaching 170,000 without an acute health service.
(AMcE)
The proposals, as recommended in the Hayes Report, are expected to be endorsed by the Health Minister Bairbre de Brún tomorrow in a consultation document.
Last summer the taskforce appointed to review Northern Ireland’s acute hospitals under Dr Maurice Hayes advised streamlining theses services into nine main hospitals – thus downgrading seven of the province’s remaining smaller hospitals.
As such, it is this proposed removal of accident and emergency and maternity services from local hospitals which is causing most controversy.
Joe Byrne SDLP assembly member for West Tyrone said he found reports that Bairbre de Brún was standing by Hayes’ recommendations was “very disturbing”.
“The reported position of the Health minister on acute services would leave the county of Tyrone without any meaningful acute hospital services.
“The ultimate test is the sincerity of the Minister and her department to deliver hospital services to both rural and urban communities in an equitable way. The continual uncertainty about hospital services in Tyrone is causing undue pain and misery to both health care professionals and patients.”
Many of the hundreds of casualties of the 1998 Omagh bomb were treated in the Tyrone County hospital in Omagh immediately after the blast.
Mr Byrne said that the recommendation to locate the new hospital near Enniskillen would leave the people of Tyrone with a third rate health service. He added the Enniskillen proposed site would serve a population of only 90,000, leaving Tyrone a county with a population approaching 170,000 without an acute health service.
(AMcE)
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