Health Minister Simon Hamilton RMG64
THE Department of Health has been accused of deliberately not revealing how many cancer patients from Fermanagh are having to travel outside the county for treatment that could be carried out in Enniskillen.
SDLP councillor Richie McPhillips says it’s scandalous that the Health Minister Simon Hamilton has refused to reveal how many patients from the county are “being denied access to treatment” at the South West Acute Hospital.
Cllr McPhillips says the “increasing centralisation of key hospital resources in Belfast, Craigavon and Derry” is inevitably having an adverse impact on rural areas like Fermanagh.
He said: “There can be no justification in spending tens of millions of pounds in developing a state of the art hospital complex in our area only for it to be effectively downgraded on a drip feed approach.”
The SDLP representative blasted the continued refusal of the Department to release the statistics for Fermanagh cancer patients, saying it represents “an abuse of democracy”.
He added: “For months the SDLP has been trying to obtain the exact statistics in relation to the numbers of patients being denied treatment in the South West. The questions were straightforward. We simply wanted to know the number of cancer patients here that have been referred to other hospitals or medical institutions across the North. However our questions were simply blocked. That curtain of official secrecy in relation to legitimate questions of public interest and concern to local people is unforgivable”.
The issue of fewer procedures being provided in Enniskillen was put to Mr Hamilton by this newspaper when he visited Fermanagh last month. He said at the time that people here need to accept that they will have to travel “a little further” for some aspects of healthcare.
Cllr McPhillips has also highlighted a recent case of one local man forced to travel to Altnagelvin for a procedure that he believes could easily have been done in Enniskillen.
He said: “Just a couple of weeks ago of the 12 patients that were receiving cancer treatments in Derry, nine of them had travelled from Fermanagh.
“One man had only been contacted the previous day. He was asked what his levels of health and fitness were and replied that he could barely walk from his bedroom to the bathroom. Yet he was told that he had to make a journey of 150 miles across some of the worst roads in the country to get treated in Derry.
“After four hours he was told that there was a problem with his bloods and that he would have to go home without any treatment. The stress that poor man and his family had to go through was appalling. Why could that patient not have had his preliminary blood tests carried out in the South West without being forced to make a totally unjustified long and painful journey for absolutely no health benefit?” Mr McPhillips added.
A spokesman for the Department told Mr McPhillips the “information was not readily available”. At time of going to press this paper had not received a response from the Department of Health.
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