These young people need surgery now

FUNDING for vital spinal surgery for children suffering from scoliosis has already been provided for in the HSE’s plan for 2015.

It’s there. It’s accounted for. There is no necessity to fight for this money. What’s more, such surgery has also been given priority status by none other than Health Minister Leo Varadkar.

So why then are there more than 170 names languishing on the waiting list for this life - changing procedure at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin?

Curvature of the spine is a condition that afflicts a relatively small number of individuals.

It is also a condition that can be successfully corrected by surgical intervention, thereby transforming the existence of any child enduring this debilitating and life-restricting infirmity.

That any young person should find themselves depressed and having to resort to up to eight painkillers a day to alleviate their discomfort is unacceptable. Yet that is precisely the situation for 16-year-old Chloe Kennedy, just one of a number of teenage scoliosis sufferers who, together with their parents, protested yesterday at the Dáil.

Many of those hoping, day in and day out, that they will soon be given the goahead for surgery have now been on the hospital waiting list for years.

And it is a peculiar torture for these young people to have to live their lives waiting to see if their names are on the list for surgery.

Will they be called now, or will they have to wait until the list is reviewed once again and the lucky few are chosen?

Surely it is not beyond the bounds of credibility to suggest that the means must be found to get these young people off the scoliosis waiting list and into the operating theatre...now?