A PROMINENT group of health professionals has strongly urged the Government to locate the proposed children’s hospital on a site adjoining the Coombe maternity hospital instead of at St James’s.
Dr Roisin Healy, a spokesperson for the New Children’s Hospital Alliance, who previously worked as a consultant paediatrician at Crumlin Children’s Hospital, warned that newborn infants could die if the proposed children’s hospital was not co-located with a maternity hospital.
Last week, following the publication of the Dolphin review group report, the Government announced that the new National Paediatric Hospital would be built at the St James’s Hospital site. However, the proposal does not include any plans to build a maternity hospital there.
Dr Healy said that the green field site next to Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown was the group’s first preference for the location of the new children’s hospital.
She said the group’s second preference was for the new facility to be located at the vacant 20.5 acre site beside the Coombe Hospital, which consists of the Bailey Gibson and John Player sites, together with the Boys’ Brigade’s former playing fields.
This would facilitate the quick transfer of critically ill newborn babies via a short corridor from the maternity hospital to a new children’s hospital on the adjacent site.
She said because there were no plans to build a new maternity hospital at St James’s in the short or medium term, babies would instead have to be transferred via ambulance from St James’s to the Coombe Hospital, which is just under a kilometre away.
“Some children, such as those with severe cardiac defects, will die because they will be too ill to be moved by ambulance,
? she claimed.
“I think that the broad paediatric community would consider that it is more important to look after our children in the maternity hospitals than to be co-located with an adult hospital that has no children. It is a treacherous journey for a little newborn baby in an ambulance when it is unnecessary.
?
The doctor pointed out that approximately 500 newborn babies are transferred every year from hospitals in Dublin to intensive care units at either Temple Street Hospital or Crumlin Children’s Hospital.
Dr Margaret Sheridan, a retired consultant neonatologist who worked at the Coombe Hospital and is now a member of the board, echoed Dr Healy’s concerns.
“If the baby is critically ill at birth and if the hospital is co-located, the sub specialists in the children’s hospital can just walk across the corridor and facilitate resuscitation or other procedures in that critical period,
? she said.
“Once a baby has to go in an ambulance it always makes life more complicated because they have to be attached to different equipment, they are in motion on the roads and all the rest.
?
Last week the boards of the city’s three children’s hospitals in Tallaght, Crumlin and Temple Street wrote to Health Minister James Reilly to welcome the Government’s decision to build the new children’s hospital at St James’s Hospital.
But in the letter, seen by Southside People, the chairpersons of all three hospitals also urged the Government to
“proceed without delay to build a maternity hospital on this [St James’s Hospital] site
?.
On Thursday, November 1, a letter signed by 40 consultants at Crumlin Children’s Hospital that was published in a national newspaper, argued that the new children’s hospital on the St James’s/Coombe site should be physically attached to the Coombe Hospital via a short corridor link.
They pointed out that 95 per cent of babies transferred to intensive care units at the city’s three children’s hospitals were
“critically ill babies
? and were
“too unstable for ambulance transfer
?.
A spokesperson at the Department of Health said the decision to choose the St James’s site from among the range of options presented in the Dolphin Report ensured that the planned co-location with an adult hospital and, ultimately, tri-location with a maternity hospital, will be delivered.
“In identifying the new site, the Government has carefully considered the report of the Dolphin Group which was established last March to consider the issues along with detailed supplementary information on cost, time and planning,
? the spokesperson said.
“Co-location, and ultimately tri-location with a maternity hospital on the St James’s campus, will support the provision of excellence in clinical care that our children deserve.”