who sued the HSE for alleged negligence
The High Court has approved a settlement of €690,000 to a young girl who had sued the HSE and a Dublin hospital for alleged medical negligence arising out of the care she received prior to and during the months following her birth.
The award which, was made without admission of liability, was made in favour of Aisling Lenehan (aged seven) who was diagnosed with Down Syndrome and heart problems following her birth in Sligo General Hospital in December 2004.
Through her mother Patricia Lynch (above right) Aisling Lynch sued the HSE and Our Ladies Children’s Hospital Crumlin seeking damages for alleged medical negligence for failing to diagnose and treat Aisling in a timely fashion.
It was claimed there was a five-month delay before Aisling, who attended at both Sligo General Hospital and Our Ladies hospital in Crumlin, received a cardiology review. There was a delay in commencing Aisling on the appropriate medication, it was submitted.
This it was claimed caused her to develop severe pulmonary hypertension, a severe condition which effects the heart and is irreversible.
In her statement of claim, it was alleged the defendants failed to treat or care for Aisling properly.
Aisling will require medication and care for the rest of her life.
The defendants had denied the claims and the action was settled without admission of liability.
The settlement was approved yesterday by the President of High Court Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, who praised the family for their dedication and the level of care they have provided to date for Aisling.
The Judge added that in the circumstances Aisling had received a good settlement. Had they lost they case they would have come away with nothing.
The court heard that the family, who currently reside in Austrian capital Vienna, hope to return to Ireland.
In a statement following today’s ruling Ms Lynch said she was delighted and relieved that “the ordeal was over”.
The case, which started four weeks ago, she said was “a game of high stakes poker.”
She said that had the family lost the action they “could have lost everything”, including their home.
However as a result of the settlement they could now achieve things that would hugely improve the quality of Aisling’s life.
She expressed her gratitude to her lawyers and those within the legal system who had come to the family’s aid when “Aisling and I most needed it.” The system worked for us although I do have grave reservations about the manner in which the HSE engaged with the system, she added.
Big hope for Parkinson’s patients as scientists discover genes that protect against it
A Molecular “switch” that could explain how certain genes protect the brain from Parkinson’s disease has been discovered by scientists.
A team from the University of Dundee said they have mapped the molecular pathway between the Pink1 enzyme, produced by the Pink1 gene, and a protein called Parkin.
Mapping the link means they now know that the Pink1 gene works to control the Parkin gene, paving the way for a potential treatment for the disease.
Parkin’s main job is to keep cells healthy by removing damaged proteins, and mutations in the gene that makes it can also cause inherited forms of Parkinson’s in younger patients.
Around 127,000 people in the UK have Parkinson’s, a progressive neurological condition for which there is no cure.
Scientists have already discovered 20 genes, including Parkin and Pink1, that cause Parkinson’s disease – but they did not know what the role of the genes was or why the mutations caused the disease.
They looked at the way the Pink1 enzyme reacted with the Parkin and the 18 other known genes. A “staggering” result took place between Pink1 and Parkin but nothing happened with the 18 other tests.
Scientists now hope that a drug can be developed that mimics Pink1 in switching on the Parkin gene.
The team was led jointly by Dr Miratul Muqit and Professor Dario Alessi at the Medical Research Council protein phosphorylation unit at the University of Dundee.
Dr Muqit said: “Parkinson’s is a devastating degenerative brain disorder and currently we have no drugs in the clinic that can cure or slow the disease down.
“Over the last decade many genes have been linked to Parkinson’s but a major roadblock has been determining the function of these genes in the brain and how the mutations lead to brain degeneration.
“Our work suggests this pathway can’t be switched on in Parkinson’s patients with genetic mutations in Pink1 or Parkin. More research will be needed to see whether this also happens in Parkinson’s patients who do not carry these mutations.”
Prof Alessi said: “Now that we have identified this pathway the key next step will be to identify the nature of these damaged proteins that are normally removed by Parkin.
“Although further studies are required, our findings also suggest that designer drugs that switch this pathway on could be used to treat Parkinson’s.”
The research, published in the latest edition of the journal Open Biology, was funded by the Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust, Parkinson’s UK, the J Macdonald Menzies Charitable Trust and the Michael J Fox Foundation.
Contrasting fortunes in Irish house prices
‘Dublin v Rest of Ireland’
V 
Dublin prices have fallen by a massive 57% from their 2007 peak while those in the rest of the country have fallen by “only” 47%.
The latest house price figures from the CSO, published yesterday, show that while prices have bottomed out in Dublin, they are still continuing to fall in the rest of the country.
Given that Dublin house prices have already fallen by much more than those elsewhere in the country this almost certainly means that house prices outside of the capital still have much further to fall.
In April house and apartment prices in Dublin rose by an average of 0.5pc while they fell by a further 2pc in the rest of the country. However, even after last month’s increase average house and apartment prices in Dublin have fallen by a massive 57pc from their 2007 peak while those in the rest of the country have fallen by “only” 47pc.
That Dublin house prices have stopped falling should come as little surprise. Last year’s census revealed that while the proportion of unoccupied houses and apartments had fallen to 10pc or less in Dublin and the surrounding counties, it was as high as 30pc in the north midlands, some of the border counties and along the western seaboard.
So why, despite much lower vacancy rates, have Dublin house prices fallen by much more than those in the rest of the country? A feature of the Irish house price crash has been the reluctance of sellers to adjust their price expectations downward to match the new reality in the marketplace. This reluctance has been much more marked outside the capital.
In Dublin, even during the worst of the crash, significant volumes of property transactions still took place. This introduced a note of reality into the prices being demanded by sellers. It was impossible for sellers and their lenders to ignore the price which a comparable house down the road sold for.
With far lower transaction volumes outside of Dublin this reality check was missing. This meant that sellers were able to persist with unrealistic asking prices for much longer. However, one can only ignore reality for so long. The continuing price falls being experienced outside of Dublin mean that sellers in the rest of the country are finally adjusting their asking prices to reflect what buyers are willing to pay.
For sellers outside of Dublin, where vacancy rates are much higher than those in the capital, the bad news is that the eventual price falls will almost certainly be even more severe than those already experienced in Dublin.
However, even in Dublin, the bottoming-out in house prices indicated by yesterday’s CSO figures may prove to be short-lived. One of the factors stabilising house prices in Dublin has been rising rents.
However, with the Government seemingly determined to reduce the amount which it spends on rent allowance, the cost of which came to €465m last year, any stabilisation in house prices could yet turn out to be temporary.
‘Elaborate’ 1.6 million cannabis growing operation found in Laghey Co Donegal
Gardai in Donegal have seized cannabis plants with an estimated street value of €1.6 million.
Assisted by the Garda National Drug Unit, gardaí from Ballyshannon seized the plants from a premises in Laghey today.
Around 2,000 plants were found on the premises which gardaí described as “an elaborate growing operation”. The seizure was made during the planned search of a warehouse in Trummon, Laghey.
Two men, one aged in his 30s and the other in his 40s, were arrested at the scene.
They are currently being held at Ballyshannon Garda Station under Section 2 of the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act 1996.
46 Irish children have died in HSE health care system since 2010
Forty-six children known to care services have died since the start of 2010 including 13 in the first four months of this year, with the HSE admitting that its frontline services are under pressure.
The figures were revealed as the independent National Review Panel (NRP), charged with investigating the circumstances of deaths in care, published six detailed files relating to five deaths and one serious incident.
Three deaths followed an accident, one was a suicide and one was natural causes. It found examples of both good and bad practice in the cases, with concerns over a growing number of neglect cases and shortcomings in how they are dealt with.
The figures show that of the 11 deaths in 2011 and the 13 deaths so far this year, five were suicides.
Yesterday Dr Helen Buckley, (above right) chair of the NRP, said there was a need for greater integration of services to help young people passing through the care system, particularly regarding issues such as mental health and substance abuse.
Sending their condolences to the families of those who had died, both Dr Buckley and Paul Harrison, a HSE national childcare specialist, said improvements were needed to the service.
“From a national perspective there is a lack of policy or a lack of implementation of that policy regarding assessments, supervision and recording,” Dr Buckley said, adding that this was particularly so in cases involving suicide prevention.
Dr Buckley said there had been pressure on services, people placed on waiting lists, delays in referrals and delays in contacting family members, as well as some shortcomings in management and frontline services.
Case conferences had been under-utilised, she said, while inadequate assessments had also featured.
Crucially, she said there had been a failure, “reminiscent of the Roscommon Report”, to take child neglect seriously.
Mr Harrison said there had been improvements in the system since 2010 and work was continuing on achieving better integration of services needed by young people in the care system.
The case files highlighted certain issues, such as the shortage of localised drug treatment places for adolescents and the “labelling” of cases dictating the seriousness with which they were treated, with the panel claiming that neglect is sometimes deprioritised when it can be the most harmful type of child abuse. Mr Harrison said: “Neglect is not an event, it is a process.”
In one case involving a 16-year-old boy who died in an accident, the report shows how he and his siblings suffered neglect in the home and drug use and criminality became commonplace, yet the children remained living with parents who were unable to exert any control in a squalid domestic setting.
Ireland launches Amber Alert system for missing children
The long-awaited Amber Alert system for abducted children has been rolled out across Ireland more than three years after being given the go-ahead.
The Child Rescue Ireland (CRI) Alert will be triggered if gardaí believe a child has been abducted and that there is an immediate and serious risk to his or her health or welfare.
Senior Gardaí said the system – launched on International Missing Children’s Day – has the potential to save the life of a child.
An Amber Alert type system may have saved schoolboy Philip Cairns when he vanished 25 years ago, his mother said at the launch.
Alice Cairns welcomed the launch of the long-awaited Child Rescue Ireland (CRI) Alert, which will be triggered if Gardai suspect an abducted child is at immediate and serious risk.
Mrs Cairns said instant up-to-date technology and awareness may have found her son then.
More than 130 youngsters who went missing in Ireland between 2007 and 2011 are still unaccounted for.
Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan said the aim of the scheme is to get the public’s help in child abduction cases.
Road signs, the internet and media will be used to highlight cases.
Once activated, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) will also be informed, the Commissioner said.
“In cases where an abducted child has been brought into or taken out of the jurisdiction the services of Interpol will be utilised,” he added.
The Amber Alert began in the US in 1996 when broadcasters teamed up with local police to develop an early warning system – including sharing photos and information – to help find abducted children.
Amber – America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response – was created as a legacy to nine-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas.
The alert is used in the rare case when it is believed a child has been kidnapped, is in danger, and there is enough information to issue a description. It is credited with helping in the recovery of more than 400 abducted children.
Former justice minister Dermot Ahern first signed off on the US-style rapid response scheme in April 2009.
Police forces across the UK, including the PSNI, have been operating a similar system since 2003 called Child Rescue Alert.
Commissioner Callinan defended the time it took to launch the alert system, adding that gardaí have been working with several agencies, including public transport chiefs.
“It’s not as if we have been sitting on our hands. We’ve been working very, very hard,” he said.
He also stressed it was important for the public to be vigilant and know that it will only be triggered in the most serious situations.
“The first few hours, like all very serious incidents, are of particular importance in terms of the success or otherwise of an operation such as this,” he added.
Elsewhere Justice Minister Alan Shatter said the CRI Alert will give gardaí the speedy means of disseminating key information during the critical period immediately after a child is reported missing.
“Thankfully, the need to use this system will not arise frequently,” said Mr Shatter.
“However, it is vital that we have an effective and appropriate response system in place to help locate a child who has gone missing as quickly as possible.
Elsewhere, the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children ISPCC was awarded an EU grant of €150,000 to set up a Missing Children’s Hotline.
The hotline, 116 000, will be operational before the end of the year and provide advice and support to family members of a missing child, to the child itself, gardai and the HSE.
Ashley Balbirnie, chief executive, said the ISPCC believe this is a vital service for missing children and their families, whether the child has been abducted, run away, lost or taken by a parent.
“We are delighted that after years of advocating for this service in conjunction with our colleagues in Missing Children Europe, it will finally become a reality,” he added.
Children’s minister Frances Fitzgerald said she will consider an application for funding to balance the set-up costs of the hotline on top of the grant from the EU Daphne Programme.
“The allocation of EU funding to the ISPCC is another very welcome step in this process and is very timely given that this is International Missing Children’s Day,” she added.
No comments:
Post a Comment