Paediatric radiologist Gabrielle Colleran, from Galway
Earlier today.
Paediatric radiologist Gabrielle Colleran, from Galway, recalled the death of her father and called for reform of the Irish health system – namely timely access to quality healthcare.
She wrote…
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, CEO of the Irish Cancer Society Averil Power said cancer patients without a medical card or private health insurance face inpatient charges of up to €800 a year for treatment such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy.
Where the charges are not paid within 47 days, HSE policy is that they may be pursued by a debt collection agency.
“These are patients who are very sick, who are already having to cope with the emotional and physical impact of cancer.
“To be pursued in such a frightening way by your public hospital system is incredibly unfair.”
Call for halt to collection agencies pursuing cancer patients (RTÉ)
Listen to RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland item here
Pic: BBC
From a 12-page information leaflet about cervical screening on the HSE website
This morning.
In the The Times Ireland edition.
Journalist Catherine Sanz reports that the HSE have created new information booklets to accompany smear test invitations sent out to women.
Ms Sanz reports the booklets “will contain disclaimers and illustrated explanations of why abnormalities can be missed”.
Ms Sanz reports:
The new leaflets say: “Abnormalities may be missed because the person reading your sample may miss the abnormality. This happens occasionally no matter how experienced the reader is.” They also warn that abnormalities can be missed because “they do not look much different from normal cells” and “there may be very few abnormal cells in the sample”. The leaflet adds that, because cervical cancer takes many years to develop, any abnormal cells missed in one test can be detected in the next one.
Smear test can’t rule out cervical cancer, women told (The Times Ireland edition)
Information leaflet: About your free cervical screening (HSE)
Tonight.
On RTÉ One’s Prime Time, at 9.35pm.
Toublemakers.
Frank Shouldice, of RTÉ Investigates, reports:
Your Service Your Say is a bedrock of HSE public policy. It invites, even encourages, those who use any of its many health services to step forward with a comment or complaint when the occasion arises.
This means everybody – from hospital patients to their families and friends.
In promoting a Your Service Your Say policy the National Healthcare Charter boldly declares: “Your feedback matters – tell us about your experience so that we can have your concerns addressed.”
It promises to “involve you and your family and carers in decision-making about your healthcare.”
This is not the experience of the five people who feature in RTÉ Investigates – Troublemakers, which airs on Prime Time tonight.
Daring to challenge HSE’s comment, complaint service (Frank Shouldice, RTE)
President of the Epidemiology and Public Health section of the Royal Society of Medicine Dr Gabriel Scally who is carrying out a scoping inquiry into the CervicalCheck scandal
The Health Service Executive has confirmed that the number of women affected by the CervicalCheck controversy has increased from 209 to 221.
HSE Director General John Conaghan told the Public Accounts Committee, in response to questions from Labour’s Alan Kelly, that a further 12 cases have been identified.
Mr Conaghan said that so far three cases have been settled, 35 are active and there are two potential cases.
In relation to the review of 3,000 smear tests which has yet to begin, Mr Kelly said it will be impossible for the Scally Review to be completed by the end of August….
Number of women affected in smear test scandal rises to 221 (RTÉ)
Meanwhile…
Social Democrats co-leader Róisín Shortall TD accused the HSE of “deliberately delaying” the release of the slides for review by independent cytologists by holding up a crucial protocol for their release.
Ms Shorthall said:
“The lack of urgency being shown by the HSE in allowing women to get access to their smear tests is incredibly alarming.
The only conclusion that we can draw at this stage is that the HSE is deliberately foot-dragging on this issue to impede women’s efforts to seek legal redress.
…I am also increasingly concerned that the scoping inquiry headed by Dr Gabriel Scally is being frustrated by its lack of access to the lab data it needs to fulfil its important mandate.
Dr Scally’s inquiry has already faced difficulties in getting documentation in searchable formats.
The data on the accuracy rates of screening by individual labs is the key information needed.
Why is there a delay in making this available to Dr Scally? The Minister must step in to ensure there is no further delay in releasing this information.”
Meanwhile…
“I just have no control over it. In some ways I just wish it was all over” Emma Mhic Mhathuna tells @MiriamOCal now #CervicalCheckScandal #TodaySOR
— Today Sean O’Rourke (@TodaySOR) July 5, 2018
Meanwhile…
This morning.
On Today with Sean O’Rourke, presented by Miriam O’Callaghan, Vicky Phelan was asked for her reaction to Fergal Bowers’ report that not even one of the 3,000 cervical smear slides being reviewed have been looked at yet.
Ms Phelan said:
“Justine McCarthy actually wrote about this in The Sunday Times – it was actually a couple of weeks ago, on the 17th of June. Because she had been in touch with me beforehand, before she published it, to see if I had heard anything different.
“So, you know, she had highlighted this back then and she had got the statement from the college of gynaecologists [Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists] who confirmed that the review wouldn’t be completed until later in the year.
“So I’m not sure why that wasn’t highlighted at the time, you know, a couple of weeks ago that it’s only kind of coming to the attention of the HSE today. I’m a bit surprised to be honest.”
Rollingnews
Bill Kenneally
Last February.
Several men who had been abused by Waterford basketball coach Bill Kenneally held a press conference in the Buswells Hotel on Molesworth Street, Dublin 2.
Kenneally was given a 14-year sentence in 2016, for sexually abusing ten boys aged between 12 and 16 in Waterford between 1984 and 1987.
During the press conference in February, abuse survivors Colin Power and Jason Clancy said they believed gardai were aware of Kenneally’s abuse as far back as 1979.
The survivors’ claims of a cover-up of the abuse by gardai, members of Fianna Fáil, the HSE and Catholic Church are to be examined by a Commission of Investigation overseen by retired Circuit Court Judge Barry Hickson from next month.
Further to this…
This morning, Saoirse McGarrigle, in the Irish Mirror, reports:
The Child and Family Agency has refused to identify paedophile Bill Kenneally in the medical notes of a boy targeted by him…
Kevin Keating asked to see the 1987 file in which he detailed being lured to the pervert’s home, tied up and threatened if he told anyone about the abuse.
Tusla sent it to him – but the sadist’s name was blanked out despite the fact he was jailed for 14 years in 2016 – 29 years after Kevin first named him to a doctor. Mr Keating and other victims of the former basketball coach claim it proves health bosses knew of the abuse in the 1980s.
The Waterford man said: “The medical notes confirm I told her [the doctor] about the abuse. But there are parts of the papers blacked out. Bill Kenneally’s name has been hidden.
“But that should not be redacted. We know it’s his name there and this shows the HSE knew I and others were being abused by him at that time.”
In a medical report dated 1989 a paediatrician wrote:
“Kevin was seen by me on several occasions between 22/10/87 and the summer of 1988.
“Kevin was a 14-year-old boy who was alleging sexual abuse by ______.
“One episode which occurred on the Halloween of ’86 when he was brought into a house and tied up.
“He was also making allegations other boys had been approached by the same person.
“There is a question of money changing hands in some of these cases.”
Previously: “We Know The Gardai Were Aware Of His Activities Since 1979”
“When it first broke out, I was like ‘Okay, well, the head of the HSE is surely going to do something’, and he didn’t.
And then I looked to Simon Harris. I was thinking ‘Well, surely the Minister for Health is going to step in and do something’. That’s why we give these people powers, and he didn’t do anything.
So then I was like ‘Surely the Taoiseach is going to do something’. And he just seems to be sticking up for them … they’re all hiding there in the Dáil and they don’t see what I see.
The Government need to go. They’re not actually – and I’m not being insulting, it’s genuine – they’re not actually capable of minding us, and that is their job. To make sure that we’re okay.”
Mother-of–five Emma Mhic Mhathúna (top) to Audrey Carville on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland earlier.
‘I’m dying when I don’t need to’ – Emma Mhic Mhathúna speaks after terminal cancer diagnosis (RTÉ)
Previously: Emma’s Story
This morning.
The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health.
Tony O’Brien, director general of the HSE, and Minister for Health Simon Harris are answering questions from TDs about the CervicalCheck scandal.
Watch live here.
Meanwhile…
“At the heart of the Cervical Check crisis is a lack of oversight, governance and accountability within the HSE and throughout our entire health system, from the Minister for Health down.
“The lack of legal accountability structures has allowed a culture of concealment and legal defensiveness to prevail in our health system. That has clearly worked against the best interests of patients, including the thousands of women who are now affected by the shambolic and appalling way that Cervical Check audits were carried out.
In the absence of meaningful legal reforms, simply appointing a new chief executive to head up the HSE once Tony O’Brien steps down in the coming weeks will be an entirely futile gesture.
For this reason, I am urging the Minister for Health Simon Harris to appoint an interim chief executive and to at the same time prioritise key accountability reforms recommended in the Sláintecare health report published a year ago by a cross-party Oireachtas committee which I chaired.”
Roisin Shortall, Social Democrats co-leader
From top: Cartoon from Annie West and HSE management this afternoon
Or uncAnnie?
Eh?
Uncanny so.
Belinda writes:
Today’s session of the [Joint Oireachtas] Health Committee [examining the CerivalCheck scandal] and the all-male HSE contingent was neatly forshadowed [on Monday] by Annie West on your site…thank her for me.
Previously: CervicalCheck
Earlier: Hey, Tony
Letter from Tony O’Brien to Simon Harris on March 6 saying it was the right time for him to announce he was stepping down from the HSE “in light of the significant progress being made to reform the health service” #cervicalcheck pic.twitter.com/8KzQSBc44T
— Ken Foxe (@kenfoxe) May 2, 2018
This afternoon.
Leinster House, Dublin 2
Director General of HSE Tony O Brien arrives at Leinster House to attend the Health Committee on the CervicalCheck scandal.
More to follow.
Earlier: Meanwhile, In The Dail
Update:
Director General of the Health Service Executive this afternoon
Tony O’Brien has said that of the 17 women whose smear tests were the subject of a review and who have since passed away, two had the results of their review communicated to them before they died.
The numbers relating to the 208 women whose smear tests were the subject of review who have been informed remain at 46, while 162 have not been told, Mr O’Brien confirmed to the committee…
Two of 17 women learned of CervicalCheck review before dying (RTÉ)
