Susan O’Keeffe: If we want health service reform, we must listen to frontline workers The Covid-19 crisis has laid bare the many shortcomings in our health service, but it’s those at the coalface who understand best what is needed to fix it 11th February, 2021
Healthcare workers here are not routinely tested for the virus, whereas in the UK, for example, they are tested twice a week
When the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) appeared before the Joint Oireachtas Health Committee earlier this week, the headlines surprised no one. They centred on the exhaustion of frontline health workers and the chaos of the early months of the pandemic. Not surprisingly, they also included details of the haphazard distribution of vaccines when they first arrived here just after Christmas.
The Covid-19 infection situation in nursing homes remains precarious and those impacted by the virus are under extreme pressure as critical time may have been lost in bringing them vaccines, the Oireachtas health committee was told today.
The committee was told that 1,543 residents have lost their lives to Covid-19 in nursing homes; 369 in the last month.
Tadhg Daly, head of Nursing Homes Ireland told the Joint Oireachtas Health Committee :”We do feel a critical window of opportunity was missed. With nursing home residents the most susceptible to the virus, just 10pc of the initial 77,000 Covid-19 vaccinations administered by mid-January were within nursing homes.