Schools, sports clubs, retirement groups and unions mobilise for hospital protest

A RALLYING cry has gone out to the public from the Save Navan Hospital Campaign as thousands prepare to take streets on Saturday to demand the threat to the A&E is lifted.

Saturday’s protest will come 11 years to the day since the last major march to save services at Navan Hospital.

HSE decisions in the intervening years mean there is now less to save at Our Lady’s since then, but amid regular threats to the A$E and ICU in Navan, the campaign has warned it will not rest until the threat is lifted once and for all.

The campaign has been receiving huge support from the public for Saturdays protest which starts at 1pm at the enterprise Centre with local priests urging mass-goers to attend the rally

Community groups have been mobilizing for the rally. The GAA, soccer clubs, basketball clubs, schools, unions, churches, active retirement groups, political parties and men’s’ sheds have all come out in support of the campaign and tens of thousands of leaflets and posters have been distributed.

Campaign chairman, Peadar Toibin said it is about a life and death issue.

“I know of a football player who was taken from Páirc Tailteann to the A&E who was saved with only minutes to live. I know of people who had heart attacks, respitory blockages, brain haemorrhages, burst appendix, falls from ladders and cancer tumours who are alive today because of the work that the was done by the staff.

“There are thousands of people who are walking the streets of our towns today because of that hospital, it’s A&E and the ICU. It is by far the most important infrastructure in our county. One day each of us will need. The question is will it be there for us?” he asked.

“Patients are telling me of 11 hour waits in A&E in Drogheda hospital. Staff in Connolly were out on protest at conditions in their A&E in the last two weeks. Orthopaedic treatment in Navan had to be suspended last week because of the pressure on the A&E and ICU beds in Navan. Indeed, right now there are only 11 spare adult ICU beds in the whole country due to the pressure of Covid. Yet the HSE seek to close our A&E. This I believe would be, absolutely criminal. It will in my view lead to excess death and illness in our community.”

Deputy Toibin said the government's “stay of execution” for the hospital last week was partly due to the mobilisation of the rally.

“But a few extra months is not good enough. We want and we demand, that the threat to our A&E and ICU is completely lifted. We demand that there is proper resourcing of our A&E so its there for each one of us need it.”

Minister Thomas Byrne said the Ministers intervention last week, came about as a result of meetings between Minister Donnelly, Minister Damien English, Senator Shane Cassells and himself.

“We have been asking questions for the past few weeks, but not getting answers, about capacity elsewhere,” he said.

The campaign has also received a boost from local GPs in the North East Doctor on Call campaign who warned they did not have the capacity to operate referrals to the proposed Medical Assessment Unit and stated that if A&E was to be replaced by an MAU, it would have to be a self refer unit.

Eleven years ago more than ten thousand people took part in the he rally in Navan with colourful participation by community groups and hundred of banners and posters.

It was mainly a good humoured crowd but there was steely determination to defend the hospital against any threat of downgrading.

Protesters heard from former patients whose live were saved at Our Lady's Hospital and from politicians from across the board.

Dr Ruairí Hanley asked the 10,000 protesters who lined the streets how could a patient be safer on a hospital trolley in Drogheda than in a bed in Navan?

He said we could not afford to have 19,000 administrators looking after 12,000 hospital beds and it was time “to tackle the waste and inefficiencies and give P45s to the clowns who belong in a circus tent and not running the hospitals”.

There have been many changes to the hospital since then.

In 2013, Our Lady’s Hospital, Navan was included in the list of 10 designated Model 2 Hospitals under the Smaller Hospitals Framework. All of these hospitals were earmarked for A&E closure and all are now closed except for the Emergency Department at Our Lady’s Hospital Navan.

Around the same time, the Navan hospital was included on a list of 10 hospitals, which HIQA recommended close their A&E units. The Navan A&E is the only one of those still operating.

In the last 30 years Our Lady's Hospital has lot its status as a teaching hospital with a busy surgical department, orthopaedic trauma is no longer dealt with in Navan and in the last few years it has lost its psychiatric inpatient service.

The hospital stopped treating children more than 20 years ago.