Protest over emergency general surgery

A protest has taken place in County Fermanagh calling for services to be restored at the South West Acute Hospital.

Hundreds of people took part in a candlelit vigil in Enniskillen to mark two years since emergency general surgery was temporarily suspended.

At the time the Western Trust said it was necessary to protect the public’s safety after it had problems recruiting surgical staff.

Since then patients from Fermanagh have had to travel to Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry.

Campaigners say the distance and travel time, as well as poor transport infrastructure, puts lives at risk.

Pauline Corrigan, from the Save Our Acute Services campaign group, said people in Fermanagh feel like “second class citizens”.

“Where I live in rural Fermanagh it takes two hours to get to Altnagelvin on a good day. If we have an accident on the farm we’re done. Our animals have more rights than us,” she said.

“We’re not going to take it anymore,” she added.

“This is a step too far. People are dying and the powers that be aren’t listening.”

“I’d like to ask Mr Nesbitt to come to my house and I will travel with him up to Altnagelvin and then see if he thinks that’s safe.”

Helen O’Sullivan, from the campaign group, said: “every voice matters” and “we matter”.

“The people of Fermanagh are not going to be silenced, we want our facilities,” she said.

“I just feel for the safety of our loved ones. I think there are going to be deaths,” she continued.

“I just don’t think it’s fair and that’s the concern. The major concern is health.”

Geraldine McKay, the trust’s director of acute services, explained at the time that the decision was taken because of a lack of consultant surgeons.

She said a consultant in the general surgery team had recently resigned.

“Despite our previous and ongoing efforts to recruit, we have not been successful to date in securing the necessary consultant workforce,” Ms McKay said.

“The trust is therefore now unable to maintain the required workforce to sustain and deliver a safe emergency (unplanned) general surgical service to our population from SWAH.

“Put simply, we cannot provide an emergency general surgery service without a consultant surgical team in place to provide the required 24/7 cover.”

Emergency general surgery relates to the treatment of patients with conditions such as acute abdominal pain, infections, bleeding and trauma.

It includes operations such as removing a patient’s gall bladder, appendix or part of the bowel.

If left unattended these conditions can become life-threatening.

According to the Western Trust, SWAH dealt with about five such cases a day and that was not enough to sustain a dedicated emergency general surgical team.