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Following a decision by Health Minister Mike Nesbitt to ask the Western Health Trust to pause their consultation around a decision to permanently remove Emergency General Surgery from South West Acute Hospital in Enniskillen, local People Before Profit representative Marc Mac Seáin has said that Emergency General Surgery from Daisy Hill Hospital should be reinstated.
Mac Seáin said “Removing EGS from Daisy Hill was an extremely foolish & undemocratic move, all part of the long term managed decline of our hospital. It must be reinstated, we must see plans from our Trust & health department long term to do that & strength all acute services provided across the North of Ireland.
“10k marched on the streets of Newry in 2023 and whilst some further planned degradations in hospital services were warded off, the Trust & health department ignored the vast majority of people to rip the EGS vital acute service away."
He continued “The failed strategy of centralising acute services laid out in the Bengoa Report must stop, and clearly Nesbit realises this. It’s a complete disgrace that Sinn Féin, SDLP, Alliance, DUP & UUP all still support Bengoa’s report with its objective failure in practice.
“Many in our community are not aware of the duplicity & double-speak at play with healthcare provision. Parties will insist they support available public healthcare whilst simultaneously politically supporting strategies to rip it away alongside administrating austerity. Our health department currently plans a harmful downgrade in category of Daisy Hill & other more peripheral hospitals, whilst admitting it had no all-Island plan."
“Stormont continues to dutifully follow the strategy of stealth privatisation & austerity of healthcare set in place by Westminster across the board. Hospital services stripped away, ambulances privatised, primary care in tatters. We will all pay more to receive worse quality healthcare." Mac Seáin concluded.
