A BRAVE local mother has shared her family’s painful story in an emotional appeal to the Fermanagh public to stand up and fight for our local emergency services.
Eileen McGovern has been a member of Save Our Acute Services (SOAS) since the campaign group was set up in response to the ‘temporary’ suspension of emergency general surgery (EGS) from the SWAH two years ago. She has urged everyone in the community to turn out to a candle lit vigil calling for the return of SWAH services next week in Enniskillen.
The November 14 vigil, called ‘Shine a Light for the South West Acute Hospital’, has been organised by SOAS to mark the second anniversary of the removal of the life-saving service from the Enniskillen hospital.
Since the removal of SWAH EGS, not only have patients requiring acute surgery been forced to make the over 100 mile return journey to Derry for treatment, but the local ambulance service has also been put under increased pressure as a result of the service change.
In a video shared on the SOAS Facebook page last week, Eileen, pictured left, shared what she said was “one of the many, many reasons why I became involved and why I’ve stayed involved with this excellent group of people, who are fighting so hard to retain the services and restore the services we had cruelly taken away from us.”
“I live in Teemore with my husband Tommy,” she began. “We’re the parents of four children, three adult sons who are now living away from here, but we also have a daughter, she’s in Heaven. She died in a tragic accident in 1991.
“You may wonder what on Earth that has to do with saving a hospital.
“I just want to share with you, not to illicit pity, not for any other reason but to tell you the comfort in knowing emergency services were very, very close on hand when this dreadful accident happened.
“As I fought to save my daughter’s life through giving her my own breath. I knew the ambulance was on its way. And even though as a mother deep down I knew this may not have a good outcome, I did know the comfort to think these professionals were on their way to make all things right.
“I can still feel the hands of an ambulance man on my shoulders gently taking me away from my daughter’s body.
“They had a doctor with them and they fought and they fought but they didn’t manage to save her life. But in the 33 years we have lived without her, that pain would have been so much worse had we felt we could’ve done something.”
Eileen said she currently feels “so desperately afraid for our county”, frightened that other families may find themselves in a similar situation, but unable to access the same emergency care as “that ambulance is sitting outside Altnagelvin” waiting.
“Yes, we didn’t save our daughter, but everything was done, everything that could be done from both myself, my husband and those wonderful, wonderful people who came to try to save her life. And it has made our grief far more bearable to know that that was done,” she said.
“Already I am sure, without a shadow of a doubt, there are people in our county, in south Tyrone, who haven’t got that same story, who cannot say they feel everything possible could be done, and that is horrendous.
“It is horrendous that somebody sitting in an office, very very close to a hospital in Derry or Belfast, has made decisions to just stroke out different services that we are entitled to.”
Eileen went on to urge the local community not to stand by and allow the service to be lost. To watch her emotional appeal visit the Save Our Acute Services Facebook page.
“Our doctors, our nurses, are working flat to the mat,” she concluded. “They’re stressed beyond limit, and yet the people who are making these decisions are warm and comfortable – making decisions that’s playing with fire and playing with our lives. We deserve better.
“Fermanagh will not be forgotten!”
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