It’s very difficult to justify this.
Children in Cork suffering from a mental health related emergency will now be unable to contact an out-of-hours on-call service, as the HSE have cancelled the facility due to staff shortages. The services, both based in Cork City, have been suspended indefinitely.
The news comes following information given to GPs in the city on Friday, where they were informed by the HSE that they have had to “postpone out-of-hours on-call to the EDs (emergency departments) until staffing levels improve”.
Dr John Sheehan, a GP in Cork, has emphasised how dangerous a move this is, saying that he has had encounters with a number of young people who have come to him with suicidal thoughts, and that he would normally refer them to the now suspended emergency departments.
Sheehan told the Irish Examiner: “I’m talking about extremely vulnerable 14-year-olds, 15-year-olds who can’t be hanging around in a crisis waiting to be seen.”
In a time when the country is crying out for more attention to be paid to mental health, especially in reference to children, this harrowing news is bound to cause outrage.
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