MORE CATARACT PATIENTS GO NORTH FOR TREATMENT
A FURTHER 16 patients and their carers made the long bus journey from Kerry and west Cork to Kingsbridge Hospital, Belfast, for cataract operations at the weekend – and with further trips scheduled for the coming weeks, TDs Michael and Danny Healy-Rae have hit out at waiting lists for the procedures in the Republic of Ireland.
Saturday’s bus journey was arranged by Danny Healy-Rae TD and Michael Collins TD and followed similar trips organised in recent months. The procedure itself is largely routine, taking about 15 minutes, and Deputy Danny Healy-Rae TD told The Kerryman that further journeys to the Belfast hospital will take place on March 10, and at some point in April.
By the end of 2017, some 40,000 people were on an outpatient waiting list for eye-care procedures.
Around one in five of these had been waiting over 18 months, and some 8,500 people were awaiting cataract surgery alone – sometimes for up to four years.
“All patients are glad of this facility as they would have had to wait a very long time before their cataract procedures would be done for them in Cork or Kerry,” Deputy Danny Healy-Rae said.
“Hip and knee replacements along with other procedures can also be done in Belfast. You pay up front and you will get your money refunded to you through the HSE Cross Border Directive.”
His brother and fellow TD Michael Healy-Rae has branded the prospect of waiting four years to have a cataract removed “disgraceful”, and has called on the Minister for Health Simon Harris to address waiting times in the Republic of Ireland.
“This is a disgrace that a person has to wait four years and if I make one call to Kingsbridge in Belfast, I have them seen in less than two months,” he said.
“Only this morning I had a person on who was told they will have to wait two years just to be assessed and they are now being seen in Belfast in March of this year. This is a disgrace.
“Why can we pay a private hospital in the north to carry out the procedure and we can’t carry it out here in the South?”