Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

A lot has been said in recent days about maternity services at Portiuncula hospital in Ballinasloe. One of the issues that has emerged concerns the fact that hospital staff have had to send children to maternity hospitals in Dublin within six hours of birth to start life-saving treatment. I am talking about baby cooling treatment which is used in the case of babies born in a distressed condition.

If they suffered a lack of oxygen during labour, the cooling, which lasts for two or three days, reduces the risk of subsequent disability by 50%. This baby cooling, or therapeutic hypothermia, is a revolutionary method to treat babies who suffer a lack of oxygen reaching the brain at the time of their birth. It has been used extensively in the UK and major studies from the University of Oxford and Imperial College London have shown that baby cooling can dramatically decrease the risk of brain damage. The fact that there are no baby cooling treatment services west of the Shannon places huge pressure on doctors to deliver the baby and then decide, within a tight timeframe, whether the vulnerable newborn should be sent to Dublin by emergency ambulance. I have spoken to staff in both University Hospital Galway and Portiuncula Hospital and have been told that an internal report called for baby cooling treatment to be made available in Galway, but nothing has been done.

While we rightly examine, as we ought, any situation where shortcomings might arise in maternity services, it would be a disgrace if newborn babies in the west were put at unnecessary risk simply because of geography. It would be unacceptable if this life-saving treatment is only available in Dublin. In fact, it is a scandal if calls from doctors for baby cooling equipment to be installed in Galway maternity units have been ignored up to now. Newborn babies and their families west of the Shannon deserve much better. As we rightly seek to ensure that any shortcomings in practice are overcome and best practice is put in place, it must not be a case of using difficulties that arise in medical care from time to time as a stick to beat the provision of high quality maternity services in the west or in any other part of Ireland. It certainly would be a scandal if there were calls for such baby cooling treatment to be made available in the west and those calls have been ignored up to now. I would be grateful for a response from the Department of Health on this matter.

Also, last week I raised issues in respect of the HSE investigation into the procurement of services by Saolta. I would be grateful to hear if the Leader has received any response for me on that.