Eight A&E units closed in ten years, claims Aontú leader

As A&E units experience record overcrowding throughout the state, leading hospital campaigner and Aontú Leader, Peadar Tóibín, has laid the blame at the door of the HSE and the government parties for closing eight A&Es in the last ten years.

“Its not rocket science" said Deputy Tóibín, " you can't close eight A&Es in 10 years, during a period of significantly increasing population without creating chaos throughout the health system. It amazes me that with all the commentary of the disastrous A&E crisis, that the most obvious contributing factor, the closure of so many A&E units, is seldom discussed."

A large number of hospitals, including Roscommon County Hospital, all had their A&Es closed in just over a decade. with the Aontu leader claiming that the A&E system was "decimated purposefully by the HSE."

Despite promising extra capacity elsewhere, it never happened, according to Deputy Tóibín "in 2008 there were 21,789 hospital beds in Ireland. 14 years later that reduced to 14,412 beds. That’s a fall of 7,377 in the number of beds open in this state in just 14 years. And remember during that collapse in bed numbers since 2008, the population has increased by over 200,000 people. We have well below the EU average in the number of hospital beds at 269 beds for 100,000 people as opposed to the EU average of 387 hospital beds per 100,000 people."

He compared the current waiting list crisis as "a humanitarian disaster" and pointed out that there are in excess of 120,000 people waiting on trollies so far this year. "This is leading to deaths" he said "because there is a direct correlation between waiting on trollies and waiting in A&E and death. Its estimated to be in the region of 360 deaths a year.

Deput Tóibín also claimed that works are leaving the health sector "in their droves" because of the pressure being put in their shoulders. "This is a vicious circle as it increases the pressure on remaining staff, with at least 700 missing consultants in the health system."

There are currently 897,300 people on a hospital waiting list in this country. People whose illnesses are getting worse, who will need more expensive and more invasive treatment.

Last year there were 105,000 adverse incidents in the health care system where patients were damaged, made ill, and in some cases been disabled or lost their lives as a result of mistakes in the health system, many of these no doubt due to the pressure put on staff.

The state has paid €2billion in medical negligence claims in just five years, which is money that should have been invested in frontline services.

Despite all of this the HSE and the Government continue on their quest to close more A&E units, said the Aontú leader. "We need to call stop before many others lose their lives" he concluded.