Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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We have six petitions for consideration today. The first is Petition No. 52 of 2022 entitled Lil Reds Legacy Sepsis Awareness Campaign, which is from Mr. Joseph Hughes. The petition requests that the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and the national sepsis programme in the HSE develop a sepsis awareness campaign for television and radio explaining to the public how to recognise the signs and symptoms of sepsis. In 2022, the secretariat corresponded with the Minister for Health and the HSE on behalf of the petitioner. The HSE responded advising that, among other things, that the national clinical programme was applying for additional funding to develop a national TV campaign to raise awareness about sepsis which it aimed to run in 2023. This was forwarded to the petitioner for comment as agreed at the committee's public meeting on 27 October 2022. Since then, the national patient safety office in the Department of Health corresponded with the committee stating that, following correspondence received from the committee, it is reviewing its position and has advised the Minister for Health in that regard. On 25 November 2022, the secretariat received further correspondence from the HSE advising that the national clinical sepsis programme no longer intends to seek funding for a TV campaign this year and, rather, it will focus on an annual awareness campaign which will take place in September 2023. The petitioner and Ms Doireann O’Mahony of the Irish Sepsis Foundation appeared before the committee on 2 March 2023 to present the petition. At that meeting, it was agreed to invite representatives from the national clinical programme for sepsis to the meeting of the committee to discuss the petition. This meeting will take place at 1.30 p.m. on Thursday, 20 April 2023. It was further agreed by the committee that it would host a sepsis awareness seminar for Oireachtas Members and staff in the audiovisual room at a date to be confirmed. The committee recommends that it further discuss the petition at its public meeting on 20 April 2023 with representatives from the national clinical programme for sepsis to progress this petition further. Do members have any views on that?