More than 500 people attended a protest march against health cuts in Cork city organised by the Campaign for a Real Public Health Service on 28 June.

The march highlighted the scandal of the Mercy Hospital’s new €5 million Accident and Emergency unit which has lain idle for 18 months now as a result of the HSE’s refusal to fund the necessary staffing levels.

Dr Emer O’Flynn GP told the post-march rally that the mooted 12 hour A&E at the Mercy would represent a giant step towards the downgrading or even the eventual closure of the hospital. GPs would be reluctant to refer patients with serious complaints to a hospital that might not be able to accept the patient in an emergency.

Speaking at the march, I warned the HSE that failure to meet their deadline of opening the new A&E in July on a 24 hour basis with proper staffing levels would result in an escalation of the campaign.

The rally took a show of hands vote on three issues deciding to continue and if necessary escalate the campaign for the A&E’s opening; pledging full support for any industrial action against the cuts organised by the staff of the Mercy and calling on the trade union movement to abandon “social partnership” in favour of mobilising massive street protests against the government’s health policies.

The rally was held yards away from a ward which closed recently, with the loss of 31 beds and which the hospital recently advertised as available now for hire on a “lease rental basis”. The demonstration also highlighted the cuts which are taking place at the Orthopaedic Hospital.

The demonstration came at the end of a week in which the effects of government health cuts were graphically shown at Cork University Hospital.

A leaked e-mail from consultant plastic surgeon Jason Kelly told the stories of a 70 year old woman who had been forced to wait for five hours for an emergency arm amputation and of a woman who had been forced to lie on an A&E trolley without morphine after an emergency operation to remove her breast.

Siptu members at the Mercy Hospital have voted by a more than 6-1 majority in favour of industrial action against job cuts.  The workers (porters, catering staff, care assistants, household staff and others) voted 88-14 against the hospital's plans to let workers on temporary contracts go between here and Christmas.  The hospital says 30 jobs will go but many workers believe the real number will be closer to 60.

A constant refrain from the two-headed Drumm-Harney HSE beast is that vast sums of money are being invested in our health service, which is therefore improving all the time. It takes little information and thought to realise how imaginative a story this is. In relation to a specific area, that of cystic fibrosis, The Socialist has done a little research.

Ireland has the highest rate of cystic fibrosis in the world – one in 1,600 births. This being the case, it would be reasonable to expect Ireland to be a world leader in the treatment of the condition. The truth, however, is sadly but predictably different. Death rates of cystic fibrosis sufferers in Ireland are far higher than in Britain or Northern Ireland. A comprehensive report by Dr. Ronnie Pollock in 2005 revealed serious shortcomings in the service. In summary, he observed "current staffing… is seriously inadequate…very unbalanced, and is too thinly distributed over too many, too small, units." In response to this, the HSE commissioned a working body to examine the same issues (could this be an example of bureaucratic waste?).

So three years later, how do things stand? The Socialist spoke to Pamela O’Connor, a cystic fibrosis patient in Cork. Pamela told us that there had indeed been some changes in staffing levels in Cork – a physiotherapist and a dietician have been employed full-time. Compared to the recommendations of Dr. Pollock, however, this is wholly inadequate – he called for a minimum of 1.2 dieticians and six physiotherapists. Pamela also informed us that there is a full-time cystic fibrosis nurse employed in Cork – which compares unfavourably with Dr. Pollock’s recommendation of four such nurses. Throughout our conversation, Pamela was at pains to emphasise that the staff are extremely dedicated and do excellent work, but that they are starved of the necessary resources.

Shockingly, Pamela also informed us that these new staff are not funded by the HSE, but are in fact funded by the Cystic Fibrosis Association! As if this were not sufficient to underline the neglect of cystic fibrosis patients by the HSE, there are no isolated rooms for cystic fibrosis patients in Cork, which means that when these patients are ill and vulnerable to infection they are not protected from cross-infection from other patients in the hospital.

Any society can only truly be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Cystic fibrosis is a chronic, incurable condition which requires a great deal of care. A government whose primary health policy is to make healthcare profitable for private enterprise is never going to provide the resources necessary to care for cystic fibrosis patients, or indeed for patients generally. The only way in which appropriate care can be provided for all is through a publicly-funded health service which is free from the point of entry, and which assesses people on the basis of medical need rather than bank balance.

On Saturday 7 June over 1,000 people took part in a demonstration in Drogheda protesting against the closure of the Dochas Centre, a cancer care unit at the Lourdes Hospital.

The protest was the culmination of months of work by the local Save Our Cancer Unit (SOCU) group and commanded much regional and national media attention.

The successful protest march was then followed up in June with a rally outside Dail Eireann. Meanwhile hundreds of Drogheda people have been signing a petition at weekend stalls organised by the Socialist Party in the town opposing the cancer unit closure and calling for a halt to the destruction of the country’s public health service.

Dochas since it opening in 2003 has provided care for cancer suffers in Drogheda and throughout the North East region. Patients are now being told to travel to Beaumont Hospital in the event of the closure of Dochas. The turn out on the demonstration clearly demonstrates the strong mood of anger not just in Drogheda but throughout the North East.

The demonstration was addressed by local politicians, however the two Fianna Fail TD’s including Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern did not attend the demonstration or the Dail protest. Neither have they responded to the campaign’s attempts to contact them, which highlight their contempt for the cancer patients who will suffer as a result of the closure of the Dochas centre.

The Socialist Party welcomes the SOCU initiatives and supports the campaign. We don’t believe that we can rely on the politicians to stop the closure of Dochas. What is needed is a mass campaign of people power in Drogheda and beyond linked to the health trade unions in the hospital to stop the HSE and their political masters in government from closing this much needed facility.

An upcoming public health forum in Limerick will launch a local branch of the Campaign for a Real Public Health Service. The forum will be addressed by Limerick consultant, Gerry Burke, Ennis-based campaigner Ciaran O'Dea and Michael Murphy, Socialist Party rep.

This forum comes just in time. Current government plans will see Limerick and the surrounding region going from having five hospitals, all public in the 1980s to having one public and four private hospitals in the next four years – unless we stop it.

It is now one year on since a leak from a report threatening to close Ennis, Nenagh and St.John's (Limerick) A&Es. The still unpublished report is, however, being implemented by stealth. For instance, one quarter of the beds in St.John's are already closed.

It's not just these cuts, however. A ward in the Regional hospital remains closed due to the recruitment ban and now the HSE have announced that they intend to cut 150 jobs in Limerick. A ward in St. Joseph’s psychiatric hospital has also been closed, as an investigation found that there were missing windows and moss was growing on the walls beside patients beds.

Another fight to be taken up by a local campaign is the planned co-location at Limerick's Regional hospital. This will see tax payers’ money helping to build a private hospital on public land. As well as this, there are two other private hospitals being built in Limerick.

The Socialist Party in Limerick has already collected over 4,000 signatures of people opposed to the cuts. To help build for the forum and push the issue into the media spotlight we will be handing these in on 17 July, the anniversary of the initial leak from the report. For more information call Cian on 086-8064801.

Come to the public forum: 7:45pm Tuesday 29 July, Pery's Hotel, Glentworth St. Limerick.