Health inequality against rural community must end

Health inequality against rural community must end

24 April 2024

NORTHERN Ireland’s most senior health official has been asked to spell out how current plans to transform the health service will address discrimination against rural communities.

The appeal to Department of Health Permanent Secretary Peter May has been made by the Down Community Health Committee.

It wants Mr May to explain how transforming health provision will end the prejudicial treatment of people in rural areas as a consequence of what it describes as the “undue concentration of hospital services, particularly emergency care, in the Belfast area”.

The health committee’s chairman, Mr Eamonn McGrady, has also asked for confirmation of the Department of Health’s plans to improve efficiency and reduce costs by reducing administrative structures and the likely financial benefits to be derived as a result.

Mr McGrady said people across the district want access to basic, decent health services that everyone should be entitled to.

Mr McGrady has also asked Mr May is he satisfied with the general  level of engagement and consultation with local communities by the Department of Health and the various other health trusts.

“It is a widespread view that ‘parish pump’ politics in Belfast and the price of a divided society leads to an inappropriate concentration of services in the city,” said Mr McGrady.

He has asked if the health department has any plans to deal with this issue and what cost savings could be achieved as a result.

Earlier this month, heath campaigners unveiled plans to seek a meeting with senior health chiefs to discuss two crucial issues impacting on local patients.

They are keen to speak with South Eastern Trust representatives to discuss concerns around the future of endoscopy services at the Downe Hospital and ambulance turnaround times at the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald.

Both issues were discussed at the campaign group’s most recent meeting when concerns were expressed that plans to centralise the cleaning of specialist diagnostic equipment used in the award-winning bowel screening day procedure unit at the Downpatrick hospital could undermine its long term future.

Staff have raised “serious concerns” at plans to reduce capacity at the unit and warned it could lead to longer waiting lists, but the South Eastern Trust – which is responsible for the service – insists the bowel screening service will continue to be provided.

Two local women highlighted the importance of having access to the Downe’s bowel screening service, warning that its removal would be “absolutely devastating and horrendous”.

Health campaigners have also expressed concern in relation to startling new figures about ambulance turnaround times at the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald.

A Freedom of Information request submitted by the Down Community Health Committee for the time it takes from when an ambulance arrives at hospital with a patient to when it leaves and is clear to respond to emergency calls, focused on November last year.

Shockingly, the figures revealed the longest hand over time for one patient was 16 hours at the Ulster, with the average turnaround time for ambulances taking patients – many of them from Down District – to the hospital in Dundonald two hours, 27 minutes and 13 seconds.

The Ulster has the longest average turnaround time or any of the country’s 11 hospitals, with the second longest recorded at Craigavon Area where the time was one hour, 30 minutes and six seconds.

Campaigners believe part of the issue is the configuration of emergency services in the South Eastern Trust area and the way that services have been reduced at the Downe and Lagan Valley hospitals.

They said it was time for the Department of Health to intervene on this issue and get it sorted once and for all and to have a simple, legislative basis for an entitlement framework for service provision for healthcare across Northern Ireland.