Hands up Leo

The Taoiseach should come clean and admit that he is out of ideas on health, writes Maurice Gueret, who won’t be getting up on an electric bike any day soon

Sore Heel

No amount of fancy footwear can disguise the fact that health is the Taoiseach’s Achilles heel. It must be hurting Leo like mad, and is surely the only reason he has delayed in calling a general election. Young Dr Varadkar is very popular out leafy Castleknock way, where he tops polls and lamp posts from dizzy heights. But a full year into his high office this weekend, he has yet to seek any mandate from the country. Health is looking like an old bicycle that has been torn apart and is now being rebuilt by committee. Nobody wants to sit on it. How could anyone take charge of a service run by one big minister; three small ministers; a department, its secretary general and myriad principals; a HSE with its director general and growing band of Tsars; a Dail, a Seanad and an Oireachtas health committee; and seven hospital groups, each with chief executives? Now Leo has more bandages out and wants to add a central HSE board with a HSE executive chairman. Not just any old board. Its members are all going to be hands-on, slimmed-down executive types too. And Leo wants new local boards, too. For local accountabilities and local responsibilities. Pull the other one, Leo. Just put your hands up, admit that all your fancy socks have holes in them, and tell us honestly that you don’t know what to do.

Taking the Rap

I have been reading about the well-known rap artist and producer known as Dr Dre (pictured above left, with Eminem). His real name is

Andre Young. He isn’t a real doctor in the diagnostic or curative sense of the word. Though he did invent a great set of headphones that many doctors, this one included, listen to when walking the dog. Dr Dre sent a ‘cease and desist’ letter to a real medic who went by the name of Dr Drai. Now Dr Drai, who doesn’t rap, is actually Dr Draion M. Burch, described as a mediafriendly gynaecologist from Pennsylvania. He is author of 20 Things You May Not Know

About The Vagina and also has a very similar book for men that proffers advice on penis Pilates. Anyhow, Dr Drai the gynaecologist turned the tables on Dr Dre the rapper by arguing that he was the only real doctor of the two of them, and was more entitled to use the Dr part than the unqualified rapper. He also went on to say that he could not have been using the similar name to advance his own, as he found some of Dr Dre’s lyrics offensive to the women he worked with. The US Trademark office ruled in favour of the gynaecologist. Must be good news for all the real Dr Hooks out there too!

Cranberry Juice

There was bad news in April for cranberry farmers when the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) threw cold water on claims that the acidic fruit is useful when you have a lower urinary tract infection. New draft guidelines suggest that patients be told there is no evidence for using cranberry products to treat such infections. Good selfhelp advice when you have a urinary tract infection (pain on urinating, peeing a lot, cloudy urine, lower tummy pain) would be to drink plenty of fluids, reduce painful symptoms with paracetamol and have a sample tested by your doctor. Antibiotics are sometimes necessary. Nice says short courses are preferable, and that patients and doctors can sometimes hold on for 48 hours with a back-up prescription only, to see if symptoms pass away without them. Good thinking.

E-Bike Deaths

My push bicycle has been shed-bound for more than five years now. The idea of an electric booster bicycle appeals to me from time to time, but I haven’t taken the plunge. New research from the Netherlands has me thinking again. The Dutch, with their famed flat lands, are renowned devotees of the bicycle. But recently the number of cycling fatalities rose higher than car deaths for the first time ever. Older men on electric bikes are in the firing line. In 2016, there were more than 200 Dutch bicycle deaths. A quarter involved e-bikes, and three-quarters of those involved men of a pensionable age. Factors being mentioned include the sheer heaviness of these bikes, male over-confidence and, to a lesser extent, bad road surfaces. Many accidents seem to happen on mounting or dismounting the bike, which would suggest that older men may have trouble controlling the machine’s weight. Though I’m not ready for the pension just yet, maybe I’m not ready for electric bikes, either.