Letter to the editor - Stand up and be counted this Saturday

Dear Editor,

It is high time we all decided to stand up and be counted in relation to our hospital crisis and thank goodness we have the opportunity to do this next Saturday with the countrywide protests planned.

When Paul Reid was appointed as head man of the HSE in 2019, I felt optimistic that he might sort out the sorry mess that is the HSE. Covid got in the way and he led the HSE through that crisis. Sadly, he resigned after a very tough stint, which he was entitled to do of course. When has there not been a hospital trolley and overcrowding crisis? Is there nobody in the government or HSE with the brains and common sense to sort it out?

Our politicians tell us about how much money they are spending on health, but the crisis is going from bad to worse. Health care workers are worn out and patients are suffering needlessly in the very places where they should be guaranteed a quality of care and comfort.

Why are we educating and training nurses, doctors and health care workers, only to export them to countries where they have regular working hours and proper working conditions? Who can blame them for leaving Ireland? Good luck to them!

Savita Halapanavar, Vicky Phelan, Aishling Murphy, all R.I.P. and Luke O’Neill, all became the faces of various campaigns in this country in the past few years. I wonder if 16-year-old Aoife Johnston and 4-year-old Ahana Singh, who both died last month, will become the faces of the hospital crisis? How many people even know their names or know of the tragic facts surrounding their deaths?

If the same ‘vim & vigour’, money, effort, time and national media investigation was put into the hospital crisis as was put into those other campaigns, the hospital crisis would be long sorted! Shame on our government politicians and the HSE!

Everyone should be shouting from the rooftops all around the country this Saturday at 1pm, at the nationwide protests outside their local hospitals. There will be one at Sligo University Hospital. We can’t afford to get sick, so can we afford to be silent?

Yours sincerely,
Mags Bradley,
Carrick-on-Shannon.

If you are one of those people who experienced the on-going overcrowding and waiting on trolleys for hours on end at Sligo University Hospital why not contact the Leitrim Observer and tell us your story. You can email editor@leitrimobserver.ie or you can contact us though our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/leitrimobserver