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Sligo Cancer Campaigners Meet TD As Deadline Expires

With the two-month deadline on the return of mammography services to Sligo General Hospital having expired yesterday, see SligoToday.ie 23/7/12, and no change to the current situation members of the Save Our Cancer Services (SOCS) Steering Group held a follow-up meeting yesterday with the Sligo/Nth Leitrim TD, who gave the 62-Day commitment, Tony McLoughlin. Also present was Leitrim Councillor Enda McGloin. SOCS were seeking clarification on matters previously raised.

The SOCS committee told SligoToday.ie that problems preventing the restoration of follow-up mammography services revolve around difficulties in recruiting qualified radiographers. Suggestions brought forward by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to circumvent these were:

1)      Involve BreastCheck on a temporary basis until staff are in place to provide the service at Sligo General (SGH)

2)      Intensify recruitment efforts

3)      Approach retired members to provide the service

4)      Arrange for existing staff to undergo the required training.

Concerns were expressed at the involvement of BreastCheck given that that service has very restricted statutory obligations, particularly with regard to age profile, and in addition, it appears that this suggestion will only cover those patients who received all their treatment at SGH.

The SOCS Steering Group sought clarity on issues raised as follows:

1)      Will the Breatscheck temporary service be open to all patients from the region regardless of where they received their initial treatment and free from any age constraint?

2)      In relation to the list of patients that BreastCheck will offer follow-up mammography’s to, which has been sent from Sligo to the Galway radiology department, what department in SGH supplied the list and does it include patients as far back as 2001 to 2009?

3)      Galway University Hospital (GUH) indicated that they had approached 2 retired members of staff with a view to them returning to work on a part time basis as an interim measure and these approaches were positively received; are there any further developments on this approach to report?

4)      There is currently an outreach mammography service serving Castlebar by two Mammographers, can the staff that operate this service be asked to also attend at SGH to expedite resumption of the service in Sligo?

A request to meet Mr Bill Maher, CEO of GUH, and Mr Tony Canavan, HSE, to review progress on the above issues was made and this request will be forwarded immediately.

Finally the SOCS Steering Group stated that they remain very concerned at the lack of a clear time lined plan to restore the mammography services.

It would appear that the campaigners will now have to wait a further, as yet undetermined period to allow the HSE to explore yet more solutions to hopefully return at least the mammography services to Sligo.

The idea of a 9th Centre of Excellence in Sligo, as promised before the 2011 general election by the Labour leadership and the locally based Labour senator would now seem to be a distant dream. Also faded in memory are all the pre-election pledges made by Fine Gael in relation to cancer sufferers in Sligo and the northwest which promised to reverse the disastrous decisions made by the previous Fianna Fáil led administration.