Eamon Scanlon (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is almost two years since the publication of the Sláintecare report regarding reforming the health service into an effective and efficient service, and the Government continues to fail to deliver on commitments. My constituency has major issues with the need for physiotherapy. This week I received a letter from someone whose child cannot leave a hospital in Dublin because sufficient paediatric physiotherapy services are not available in Sligo.

A letter from the child's consultant orthopaedic surgeon states:

This is a note regarding Callum. He has had extensor mechanism reconstruction and is doing well and walking on a frame now. Hopefully he will be progressing onto crutches. We are keeping him as an inpatient in Cappagh despite the inconvenience and cost of same for all concerned because there is only a limited amount of physiotherapy resources available in Sligo. Obviously it is very disappointing that children from the West are required to stay as inpatients in Cappagh for lack of such resources and I might ask you to perhaps increase paediatric physio availability in that region to facilitate this kind of physio which is badly needed, as you know, by many children along the Western Seaboard. It is unfair on their families that they have to travel and stay in Dublin ... [when it is not necessary].

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