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TÁNAISTE MICHEÁL MARTIN has said an apology should be issued to the family of a young boy who was removed from Children’s Health Ireland’s urgent scoliosis surgery waiting list without being informed.
Martin described the incident as “shocking” and added that this “simply should not happen”.
He was referring to the case of Harvey Sherratt, who first came to public attention in February after his parents Gillian Sherratt and Stephen Morrison shared a video of their eight-year-old son struggling to breathe due to his condition worsening.
They explained that Harvey was one of hundreds of children waiting years for surgery, despite his spinal curve continuing to twist his ribcage around his heart and lungs.
Harvey’s parents revealed yesterday that he was taken off Children’s Health Ireland’s (CHI) active waiting list for surgery, despite three surgeons telling them that Harvey should have surgery to implant growth rods in his spine.
At the end of August, when Ms Sherratt questioned CHI in an email as to why she had not received any correspondence from the health group in respect of a surgery plan for Harvey, she was informed that Harvey was actually “not on an Active Spinal Surgery waiting list”.
A CHI official told Ms Sherratt in an email dated 30 August that Harvey was no longer on the list “as per the Consultant’s clinical input from his previous appointments”.
In response, Ms Sherratt wrote to CHI that she found it “incredibly concerning that Harvey was removed from the active list without our consent or even us being formed of such” and she asked, “had I not raised the question, when would I have been informed?”
Ms Sherratt yesterday told a reporter: “If I hadn’t emailed CHI, how long would we have gone without knowing that Harvey had been removed from that list.”
Speaking today, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said it’s “shocking that any child would be taken off a list like that, without any communication to the parents”.
“That simply should not happen,” said Martin, “it’s not good enough and the authorities, and the hospital authorities in particular, need to apologise to the family and facilitate surgery.”
He said the “prerequisite is that the child is provided with the means to get the surgery”.
Martin added that he favours a “combination” of providing surgery in Ireland while having “structured agreement with overseas facilities and hospitals to make sure that children get timely interventions” in instances where “existing capacity here isn’t sufficient”.
He said this should particularly be the case “for scoliosis or urgent spinal and orthopaedic surgeries”.
He added: “Twenty years ago as Minister for Health, we sent 100 children to Johns Hopkins Hospital in America to get heart surgery and it worked very well.
“We did that because the theatres in Crumlin (Children’s Hospital) were being refurbished at the time.
“It’s not ideal for some families, but fundamentally, if it’s what is required for the child’s health – and the timing is very important in terms of scoliosis – then I think we should do everything we possibly can to make sure the child gets that surgery.”
-With additional reporting from David Raleigh
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This really shouldn’t happen in this day and age in a modern western country
It shouldn’t but it can if a driver disobeys a signal inadvertently or not.
Some cab signal systems will stop the train in a situation like this, but the driver may be able to override it to some degree.
There might be no cab signalling, the system might be down.
This section of line is privately owed. And has no proper advance warning system it is run by station masters making phone calls to other stations to see if the single line is clear ,a very antiquated way of running a railway in this modern era but devastating when mistakes are made ,as we all can see ,I would reserve blaming anyone till the investigation is complete,
I remember my dad telling my that in the case of a train crash, the middle and second last carriages were always the least likely to de-rail. I always choose the second last carriage. Look at the picture.
Strange this points to a big signalling failure or driver error.
The train network in Italy is superb usually, certainly safer than driving over there.
Or maybe one of the drivers had a stroke or seizure.
Good point Shawn but train’s like this would be fitted with a device called the Deadman pedal. A bell or buzzer with go off every so often and the driver with have to press pedal. If not the emergency brakes would kick in
Their banks are on for a collision Aswell..
Skydiving feels safer than driving in Italy Jimmy
Go to talk about banks somewhere else please. Thank you
Thanks Kaz.
It appears that telephone block signalling was used on this line, this is an antiquated system. See arnie reply above.
Extract from article:
Ferrotramviaria’s 81km network is electrified at 3kV dc and includes 40km of single-track line. Track-doubling is underway on the section where the collision occurred and the line is still equipped with telephone block signalling. Last December the company had announced plans to install the Italian SCMT automatic train protection system on the Ruvo – Bitonto section of the Bari – Barletta line.
Death toll is rising, sadly.
have your say