Dr. Caitriona Henchion:

Students who spend some time in another country, if they do not get what would be the equivalent of a PPS number, they usually get a visitor number or a visitor card. They can use the card to access medical services in that country while they are there. That is one cohort that could be resolved. If, for example, somebody is recently arrived into a country undocumented, that person will still have needs. There has to be a way of providing something, whether it is an area where they are living or something like that, in order to use. It can be a separate channel. It can be a little more difficult to make sure that there are not problems with too many claims, but there has to be a way. There should be a mechanism for those people to be able to still access care.

In terms of GPs, an individual GP might not have an objection but if he or she is in a practice with two others and those two others do not want to provide the service, it is difficult for that one GP who does not have the objection to provide the service because he or she will have concerns about his or her patient coming back on a day he or she is not there with a problem and being met by someone who says that he or she does not provide the service. Sometimes it is a little harder to see. When people talk about entire hospitals or institutions not providing, if one has a relatively small number of obstetricians in a hospital and half of them say "No", that makes it logistically quite difficult to do. In terms of what needs to be done there, it is about resourcing new roles so that one will meet that critical number of staff required to make the service work. It is also about task sharing with midwives and nursing staff to make sure that there are sufficient staff to provide it and about training for all so that everybody is clear that even if they do not want to be involved in providing the procedure, they must treat people with respect and be capable of providing all of the aftercare for complication. As a result, if women go in and are faced with someone who does not provide the service, will not be worried about what that person is going to say and can be confident that everybody in the facility will be able to deal with anybody who has a complication.