Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 April 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Health Services for Persons with Lung Fibrosis: Discussion

Mr. Michael Darragh MacAuley:

This hits you like a tonne of bricks. I did not want to know what ILFA was 15 years ago. It is key. The clinicians will speak on it. I will not try to speak ahead of them, but the sooner we get the rehab, the better. We struggled to get that for my dad at the very start. I was sitting down and trying to work out fitness programmes with my limited knowledge. We were trying to bring him to the gym and do all those things for him. It needed to be part of an integrated programme, which it was not at the time. We were slightly more aware of it from what we went through with my dad when we had to go through it again with my sister. These are the supports they need to wrap around. My brother was in a similar situation where he struggled with his diagnosis. Since he has received the diagnosis, he has been actively going after that pulmonary rehab. I had conversation with Mr. Hurley before I came in. When my brother retested, he was in better shape than he was for the previous test. It was so important to go after that. These are things which we are learning which we did not necessarily want to learn about, unfortunately. We really need it as part of an integrated programme.

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