ALL ABOARD THE CATARACTS BUS!
Community rallies to transport desperate patients up to Belfast
A COMMUNITY is rallying together to make 1,000km round trips to Belfast for elderly cataract patients who are lingering in frustration on waiting lists.
Leading the charge in Cork – one of the worst-affected areas for delays to the potentially sight-saving treatments – is Jerry Harrington, whose father has already benefited from a cross-border health scheme.
Mr Harrington, 50, has now got access to a bus and offered to drive other vulnerable cataract patients, free of charge, to the North to get treatment.
And thanks to coverage of the Cork situation in the Irish Daily Mail, he said he now has ‘the names of 12 people
who have all been on a waiting list for cataract operations’ and want to avail of his bus offer.
All of the patients signed up are from Cork and Kerry.
Of the 30,792 waiting for eye treatment up to September last year, the HSE has admitted that almost half, 14,352, were from those two counties.
The figure, which includes 8,161 people waiting for more than a year, is more than four times the number of people waiting for eye treatment in Dublin.
Mr Harrington said one of the people who contacted him says they have been waiting four years for treatment, and that his own father, 90-year-old John Patrick, was close to going blind before he availed of the Cross Border Directive on Healthcare scheme.
The good Samaritan, a health and safety instructor from Bantry, is leading the way with his bus initiative as he wants to help ensure other pensioners get the same chance as his father.
He said he just couldn’t ignore the other people left for years on HSE waiting lists for cataract operations. He already has a list of 12, mostly pensioners and the list is growing every day.
When Mr Harrington’s father, who was blind in one eye, faced losing the sight in his other eye due to cataracts, he was told he would have to wait up to four years to get the operation done on the HSE, so Jerry helped arrange for him to be treated in the North.
‘Told he would have gone blind’
The hospital where the operations are due to take place, and where Mr Harrington’s father was operated on, is Kingsbridge Hospital in Belfast.
‘Others are also volunteering to accompany patients up to and back from Belfast,’ Mr Harrington told the Mail. ‘The sense of community around this is brilliant – everybody wants to help.’
The CBD scheme allows people here get treated in different jurisdictions and have costs reimbursed by the HSE within five weeks.
Anybody with a GP referral letter can avail of the scheme and be treated in any EU state.
All it took to get his father’s Belfast operation booked was three phone calls over four days. By the third call the Harringtons had a date for their father’s operation for just two weeks later.
They found out about CBD from Cork South West Independent TD Michael Collins, who is behind a nationwide campaign to get more HSE patients treated using this scheme.
Mr Harrington told the Mail last night: ‘My father’s sight was saved. He can now see clearly through that eye for the first time since 2013. He’s like a new man...
‘Had he had to wait for much longer, we were told he would have gone blind.
‘Since publicity in the Mail and the Southern Star local newspaper about my father’s operation, the phone has been non-stop. I now have the names of 12 people who have all been on a waiting list for cataract operations.
‘I will hopefully know very soon, possibly over the next few days, how many operations the hospital in Belfast can do in the same day. It could be six, or it could be 12, we don’t know.
‘If it is all 12, I will be leading a convoy of buses and cars up there. But regardless, I plan to do this as often as is required.’
He added: ‘I still feel very angry that there are so many people waiting for so long for operations... Many of them live alone.
‘Given how easy it was to get my father treated, I want to help as many other people get treated now... I will be driving the first bus, that we have had loaned to us for free, and there are other people who are keen to volunteer to drive up as well.’
Mr Harrington said a bus firm has guaranteed him the loan of an eight-seater coach and there are talks of more. The recently published Primary Care Eye Services Review Group report laid bare the shambles of HSE eye treatment. It stated: ‘Both primary care and hospital eye care services are experiencing considerable challenges in meeting current demand due to deficiencies in relation to staffing, processes and infrastructure.’
Under both the CBD and Treatment Abroad schemes, 3,966 people applied to be treated between 2012 and last year. Of these, 3,285 were approved. The total cost to the State between 2012 and last year was more than €45million.
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