A disease that kills is being ignored in favour of a disease that may kill
While the Health Minister obsesses on Twitter self-promotion – cancer patients survival rates go backwards, due to targeted government health services cuts.
The Leader of the Rural Independent Group, Deputy Mattie Mc Grath, has rounded angrily on the government, for the catastrophic failure to provide adequate cancer services across the public health system.
Speaking today (Wednesday 14th April), Deputy Mc Grath stated:
“The government’s Covid strategy, which involves cancelled and suspended treatments for non-Covid healthcare, is resulting in severe delays to life-saving cancer treatments across the country.”
“Proactive cancer screenings have fallen of a cliff, meaning people who normally would have been diagnosed, go undiagnosed. This is and will lead to cancers which are being rendered fatal, terminal or incurable, as a result of the government negligence.”
“Due to this ongoing approach, people are going undiagnosed. Missed cancer screenings can have major longer-term consequences, as it leads to more patients with advanced, harder-to-treat cancers. Why is the government ignoring the science when it comes to cancer treatment?”
“My colleagues and I, in the Rural Independent group have been constantly raising this issue and pleading on the floor of the Dáil, with the Taoiseach and his Ministers, to address this issue. We have been pointing out that people will needlessly die as a result of this absurd ongoing strategy.”
“New data now reveals a 15 percent drop in cancer patients in our public hospitals, while breast cancer surgeries are down 38 percent and colorectal cancer surgery down 26 percent. Meanwhile, waiting lists for day care and in-patient care have increased by a staggering 31.7 percent.”
“The government are behaving as if cancer has disappeared from existence. We know that is not the case. Families of cancer patients know that is not the case.”
“Incredibly, at the same time of this crisis in our health system, the Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, is more worried about not getting the same twitter recognition as the previous Minister, than about actually doing his job.”
“We are calling on the government to get real and stop playing with people’s lives. This unmitigated chaos cannot continue. People need access to life saving screenings and treatments,” concluded Deputy Mc Grath.
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