A PUBLIC MEETING WILL BE HELD IN IONAD TEAMPAILL CHRÓINE ON NEXT WEDNESDAY
NIGHT THE 23RD FEBRUARY AT 8.00PM TO DISCUSS THIS ISSUE.
When the politicians come knocking on your door please remember to ask them
this question. When will Dungloe hospital get back its 44 bed allocation?
Since December 2010, our local hospital in Dungloe has lost 14 beds. Does
anyone recall the weeks and weeks of icy cold weather? Note: any elderly
person in need of COMMUNITY HOSPITAL Care was denied due to the ongoing
closure of 14 beds in our hospital. Remember, it is OUR COMMUNITY HOSPITAL;
the patients are our relatives and our friends.
We must demand that the HSE re-open these beds again and replace the staff
which due to retirements, maternity leave, sickness e.t.c. Nurses are not
being replaced. This is hat has led to the closure of beds. Sorry, but
this is simply not good enough. There are plenty of nurses who do not have
sufficient work or indeed any work. The “moratorium” on new employment must
be lifted.
Our population is rural and isolated. Perhaps the powers that be think
that it is ok for our elderly to have no COMMUNITY HOSPITAL available to
them? Is it ok to wait for a bed to become free by another patients death?
Sadly, someone must die to make space for another.
What about the Carers, there is no respite available for these people who
are caring for people in their homes and are in need of a break? Figures
released tell us that there were 30 people waiting for a bed at Christmas.
Some of our Carers are elderly themselves and are not able to cope.
We cannot allow money to be put before the most vulnerable members of our
Society. It will take years, if ever for these cuts to be reversed. There
is also the worry locally about the privatisation of our hospital. Action
needs to be taken by this community to keep our hospital accessible to all.
There is now no hospice bed available to our community residents. Shall we
do something about our COMMUNITY HOSPITAL or shall we say nothing and hope
that this too shall pass?
Let us, as a community get together to ensure that those with
responsibility for this outrageous cut back on our elderly population do not
conveniently forget that those 14 beds ever existed. 14 beds = 14 patients
who are unable to access a bed in our local hospital due to “cut backs”