Thomas Power’s life worth more than a Garda station

Sis the message being sent to the 500,000 people in the Southeast covered by the cardiac services in University Hospital Waterford. This government can do deals when it comes to local issues like reopening Stepaside Garda station but, when it comes to life and death regional issues, people must wait in line. As the late Thomas Power discovered this day last week, the specialised cardiac equipment based in his nearest hospital is closed four times longer than it is open each week.

When the young, healthy farmer and fatherto-be drove to the hospital last Sunday with a chest pain, he was within yards of the life saving heart equipment but, given that it only opens 9-5, Monday to Friday, he would have to be transferred 140km to Cork University Hospital – a journey according to the AA that takes at least two hours.

Thirty minutes into the ambulance journey, Thomas suffered a major cardiac trauma and died.

When his family decided to tell me his story less than 24 hours after his death, they did not do it lightly. It was clear from the clinicians they spoke to that their husband, brother and son died because he could not be treated in Waterford – no ifs or buts. When Catherine Power stated that her brother did not have to die, she struck a chord.

For the rest of the week we were inundated with calls from other families who have been campaigning for a 24-hour emergency cardiac service in the Southeast, often because of their own experience.

It took the former fire chief in Waterford, Willie Doyle, to put the farcical situation into context. ‘Imagine,’ he said, ‘if I got a 999 call in the fire station for a house fire where someone’s life was in danger and I was to respond by asking for a fire engine from Cork city?’

Willie Doyle spoke from experience. His own daughter suffered a catastrophic heart attack and got swift treatment only because she got to the hospital in Waterford rapidly and before 5 o’clock in the afternoon.

Even to the lay person there is no logic to the argument that if you live within the triangle of Dublin Cork-Wexford – and you have an unforeseen cardiac episode outside of the 40 hours a week that the vital equipment is available – you will have to travel all the way to Dublin or Cork city for emergency treatment.

It is a geographic, demographic and medical catastrophe waiting to happen. Unfortunately it happened to Thomas Power last Sunday. How many others have died needlessly?

Cardiologist Dr Patrick Owens warned in Waterford last September that people would die unnecessarily because of the Government’s refusal to provide the €2.5m needed to staff the equipment on a fulltime basis.

This was the same month Thomas Power married Bernadette Delaney. She placed a photo of the scan of their unborn child on his coffin last Wednesday.

That child will know much love from the Power and Delaney families – as Thomas does.

Unfortunately he will not mark Father’s Day next year, the first anniversary of his untimely death.