You’ll get surgery at last
Boost for fund to send long-term patients North for treatment
PATIENTS waiting in pain for life-enhancing treatment such as hips and knee replacements will finally get the surgery they need – but they will have to travel to the North or Britain for it.
Simon Harris is to give an extra €55million to the National Treatment Purchase Fund to offer help, via the UK’s NHS, to all patients waiting more than nine months for ‘high volume procedures’.
These include cataract treatment, hip and knee replacement, tonsils and scopes.
The plight of the long-term suffering was highlighted by the Irish Daily Mail last November, when we told how Corkman Jerry Harrington was bringing locals on the 1,000km round trip to Belfast for cataract treatment.
However, in recent months a succession of TDs have complained about rectal and colon cases being bused to Belfast from Kerry and elsewhere in the country, causing long hours of travel before the patients, often elderly, are seen. They then have to endure the same journey homewards.
Fianna Fáil has also been demanding the significant expansion of the NTPF, pointing out that it is a key condition of the Confidence and Supply Agreement that maintains the minority Fine Gael Government in power.
The Health Minister said the number of patients waiting longer than nine months for operations would fall by 10,000 this year.
The news comes as the Taoiseach defended the Health Service in Galway yesterday, saying that there had been huge strides against cancer and heart disease, but clinical managers needed to do more.
‘Too many people are waiting too long to see specialists and to get the procedures they need,’ Leo Varadkar said.
‘We have too much overcrowding in our hospitals.’