Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, to the House. She attends the House nearly two or three times a week. I thank her for dealing with this very important matter. I also thank the proposer of the motion, Senator Mary Ann O'Brien, and the seconder, Senator Averil Power. Over 470,000 people are affected by asthma, which is a very large percentage of the population. It is essential that we do everything possible to assist those who have asthma. The motion talks about introducing a scheme to assist people with asthma with the financial burden of their condition, to deliver a free annual review for each person with asthma and to conduct an asthma death study nationwide. There is one death per week, which is unnecessary in the sense that 90% of the deaths are preventable. It is important to highlight the decisions that have been taken over the last three to four years. The Asthma Society of Ireland has done much work with all the interest groups - from the Department of Health to the HSE and the various research centres - in trying to progress a more comprehensive policy.

On 1 July 2015 the Government brought in free GP care to those under six years of age, which had not been provided before. Part of that process is the cycle of care for children under six years of age who have asthma. More than 17,000 children have been registered under the programme, which is important for those children. Up to now they did not have that free access to GP care, and where there are young children it is important that they get the best level of care at the earliest possible time. Apart from the effect that asthma has on the individual, when we look at the figures on asthma we see that 1.4 million work days are missed each year, with a total of loss of earnings in the region of €196 million. Parents of children who have asthma are also losing many days from work because obviously they have to stay at home to look after their children and make sure the proper level of care is provided. The estimated cost of those lost days is €67.5 million per annum. This is a huge loss to those people who either have asthma themselves or whose family members have asthma. Everything possible must be done to provide help and assistance for them.

I understand that the national model for care for asthma has been approved by the HSE leadership team and should be rolled out within the next few months. Another recent development is the health care professional education programme, which is a six-part modular theoretical e-learning programme. We need to provide patient education also, and while those issues are progressing, are they progressing fast enough and what can be done to progress it?Access to health care is important. Over 2 million people have a medical card or GP card. It is important that over 2 million people have access to medical care without any real costs. The next question is about the people who do not have that level of care. How can we work with them to make sure they get the maximum benefit from our health services?

This motion is important because of the cost to the health service of people who suffer from asthma. The figures I have seen show that although there are 19,000 visits to accident and emergency departments yearly, only around 5,000 people are admitted to hospital. If we can reduce the numbers who have to attend accident and emergency departments there will be less drain on our health services. One of the frightening figures was that over a hundred people who suffer from asthma were admitted to intensive care. That is nearly two people every week admitted to intensive care. These are extremely frightening figures, which demonstrate why we need to make sure we have the best possible programme. One of the earlier speakers referred to the programmes in Finland and Australia. In Australia, a comprehensive programme was introduced which helped to reduce the level of the difficulties that people with asthma would run into and reduced the number of deaths. Finland has reduced hospital admissions by something like 86%. The evidence is there that if a comprehensive programme is provided and the work is done at local level by working with health care professionals such as GPs and nurses, people can be assisted with a planned programme of care. That is extremely important. We are going down the right road. The question is how to expedite it and make sure that the programme is comprehensive in order to reduce the number of people who have to use hospital services in order to get the care they require.

I thank the Minister of State, the Department and the HSE for the work that has been done over the last three to four years. We have a lot more to do. It is important that we do everything possible to implement the programme in the shortest possible time.