Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, for coming to the House to deal with this matter. This is about having a national strategy for dealing with haemochromatosis. It is about having equal access to testing, diagnosis, and treatment. I understand that there is a proposal to the National Screening Advisory Committee as regards having a national screening programme. It is something of which we need to be conscious in the sense that, if the illness is not identified and people do not get treatment, they can suffer from organ damage. One in 83 people in this country have haemochromatosis; one in five carry the gene. The problem is that if it is not treated and not identified, it can cause problems to the liver, heart, lungs, and body tissue. Some of the symptoms are chronic tiredness, joint pain and abdominal pain. Those are some, but not all, of the symptoms. There is a simple way of dealing with this, which is by having a national screening programme that would require a simple blood test. I know the Minister was involved back in 2019, when an agreement was reached with the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, at the time as regards moving the care out of the hospital system. However, that has not worked everywhere and we do not have a comprehensive programme for dealing with it. It is now time to put in place a national screening programme and that we have a national strategy for dealing with it. This is about saving lives in the first instance but it is also about saving the time that is taken up in hospitals where people end up having to be admitted when, had the issue been identified at an earlier stage, they would not need to be in hospital. There is also still the problem where an awful lot of people are still attending outpatient departments in hospitals, which is not necessary because we should be able to deal with this at a local level with GPs. We need to get that done whereby people will not be required to attend outpatient clinics to have the treatment. Obviously, part of the treatment for people with excess iron in their blood is that they have to donate blood. We need to have co-ordination between the GPs, the HSE, and the blood bank and I ask that a national strategy be put in place.

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