“Elaine was just 15 minutes away from Roscommon Hospital”. “Elaine Curley suffered a massive heart attack as a result in internal bleeding”. We have it driven home to us that the first hour is critical in cases of suspected heart attack e.g. see http://www.hrb.ie/uploads/tx_hrbpublications/A_Picture_of_Health_2011__web_.pdf , page 17 (with foreword from the good Dr. Reilly himself!). The soundbite “Nobody is going to die because of health cuts. That is a certainty.” (http://www.thejournal.ie/no-one-will-die-because-of-health-cuts-says-minister-297430-Dec2011/) is surely one of the most ghastly examples of the lies of this government. Elaine’s case is desperate – her poor family.

I am actually a relation to Elaine who this article is about and I just want to say I totally understand where you are all coming from your points of view. We as a family are fully aware that sadly Elaine’s injuries were too severe for her to survive regardless of which hospital she was taken too I think we all deep down inside would of just loved to of been given the chance to say goodbye.

Sadly no matter how much Elaine’s tragic and untimely death is publicised it will not be the cause of any drastic changes within the community or the government.

You cut top pay before you cut services when your funded by the tax revenues of the people depending on such services. Anything else only exemplifies the real interests being served by the HSE. Shame on them who continue to receive huge salaries while cuts are made, if they are all so valuable and worthy of such salaries, they will easily find alternative employment in the event they are unwilling to work for a reduced salary.

Such a sad and avoidable story. It’s not the only case like this I’ve heard of in Roscommon since the A&E Dept. closed.

Surely emergency services should be the last thing to be cut in a money-saving exercise.

With a bloated budget, thousands of significantly overpaid consultants and advisors taking of “integrated solutions” it is clearly evident that there is enough money spent on health to provide adequate emergency services to all parts of the Island, 2 hrs is inexcusable. I agree that you can’t have all surgical services dotted around the country but no Irish Citizen should be more than 1 hr from essential emergency services, the poor mouth of the HSE does not fool anyone like every other area of the Irish Public Service it exists with the primary objective of enriching its most prominent members, the fact that there is well over 10 billion spent but a person living in Roscommon still has to travel two hours in a medical emergency highlight how skewed the priorities of the HSE really are. It’s a disgrace and I’m sorry but alot of this “all we care about is the patient” baloney could only be believed by a fool.

The situation being faced by people in Roscommon is a national disgrace! It should never of been closed in the first place.

When rich men make the decisions for a country, the poor suffer the consequences.

Yes navan is next , a hospital which serves a huge population. The next hospital nearest is Drogheda which is bulging at the seams and cannot cope. There will be more deaths. The GP out of hours service is there but GP services are not A and Es , not equipped or trained to be.

This government has blood on its hands. Shame on them.

Terrible for this family, when their daughter could possibly have been saved if Govt hadn’t closed A&E in Roscommon…!!!

And yet our Govt can afford to buy themselves Tablets, give pay rises to Advisors, Spend our money on total mismanagement of various departments…!!!

Not to mention all the promises both verbal and in writing Roscommon was given by both Kenny and Reilly in the lead up to the election to blag votes if two FG candidates were returned.

The price of a Human life – It’s the price of a Tablet Computer, the price of a Govt Advisors pay rise, The price of the CPA’s increments, The price of wastage in the CS, the price of paying unsecured Bondholders, the price of 30% of a TD’s, Ministers, Taoiseachs Salary….Could go on for pages, but you get the drift…..!!!!

Absolutely disgraceful inhumane behaviour by this Fascist Blueshirt Govt…!!!

That an Irish hospital has to issue a plea akin to a third world country or a country in violence for a proper service is disgraceful.

Minister Reilly actually gave me hope before the election. But now he’s just like the rest of them: can’t commit to his manifesto and gets caught up in another monetary situation while trying to protect himself.

Getting very, very tired of living in Ireland now.

If it happened that she went to Roscommon ED and resuscitation effort were futile, then HSE and those supporting proper ED services might have blamed Roscommon for delay. It’s an unfortunate incident

Navan Hospital A&E is next.

Navan Hospital A&E is next.

Navan Hospital A&E is next.

Navan Hospital A&E is next.

She didn’t suffer a “massive heart attack”. There’s no such thing. I presume she suffered a Cardiac Arrest caused by traumatic blood loss. The chances of surviving a traumatic cardiac arrest are very slim, and you need to be in a Trauma Centre almost straight away to have a chance.

To say that if this A&E if it had still been open would have saved her life, it probably wouldn’t. You need to be going to a centre where the proper diagnostic tools are there to find the problem, and then you need the theatres and surgeons with the skills to solve the problem.

At best in this case they may have gotten a few units of blood going in, and then continue on the journey to definitive care, but I don’t know the area. The fact of the matter is that a young woman lost her life, and there should be more centres where trauma victims should be recieving definitive care…….RIP.

At least there’s an air ambulance operating out of Athlone now. Unfortunately it probably wouldn’t have made a difference in this situation.

If the hospital in Ballinsloe could not handle this patient then there is no way in hell that the A&E in Roscommon could have handled it. What is wrong is people using the death of this girl to further their agenda’s.
It is also shocking in my opinion for journalist to use it in order to drum up a story..
Wrong, plain and simple

While it’s terrible that the journey to hospital took so long in this case, and seems to have been a such a shambolic journey, the sad reality is that even if it had happened outside the gates of Roscommon Hospital prior to the closure of the emergency department there she would still have died.

@james The golden hour period referred to is for a ‘standard’ heart attack, but this was anything but that.

It was reported elsewhere that she suffered a tear to her thoracic aorta. This is a catastrophic injury. There is no stabalising such a case effectively without emergency surgery, and even then no certainty of a good outcome. Even with immediate treatment in a specialist thoracic unit with an experienced specialist vascular surgery team on hand would be a challenge. Such expertise is never going to be available on a 24 hour basis in A&E in a local hospital.

I am not for an instant suggesting that there should not be an A&E in Roscommon, just that suggesting that the reason for this girl’s tragic death was because of the lack of one isn’t really the truth.

it’s a sad reality that if Roscommon hospital a&e was still open well then there is a fair chance that this girl would be still alive, and not to be forgotten that Roscommon a&e was closed due to lack of cash when in the same week our leader Mr kenny sanctioned millions for his local hospital in Castlebar, I’m afraid this government have fooled us for long enough….

It’s a tragedy that this girl died.

It’s not because Roscommon doesn’t have an A&E.

As mentioned earlier, yes there are time-critical aspects of medical care in trauma and cardiac emergencies. The critical period is time to definitive care – not the length of time taken to get to the nearest pokey little “local” facility.

To be safe and effective, major medical interventions need to be practiced and rehearsed and tried and tested. The staff involved need to be experts at the roles they perform, and they need to see a large number of patients with a given problem.

Having a “local” emergency department in all 26 counties on a 24/7 basis isn’t practical, isn’t safe, and isn’t sensible. We don’t have enough sick people to train enough staff to do that. Patients are far better off, on the whole, being taken to larger centralized emergency departments with access to the necessary medical and surgical backup.

Manipulating this tragedy to further a nonsensically parochial agenda is deplorable.

Im not normally one for shouting and roaring for people to be sacked, but this is f**king ridiculous! either Reilly or Kenny should definetly be held responsible for the death of this girl! They can blame ff all they want for the country being in the mess it is, but this was their call!!

Creggs is 26 miles from Ballinasloe and 44 from Galway.

But sure Enda Kenny (the person who promised this A&E would stay open) is allowed to have the craic at Bruce Springstein!

Bunch of morons on the other story egging Enda on on his “night off”. Meanwhile a young person dies needlessly.

I’ve just typed in a route into my maps on my iPhone for distance and times from Creggs (the accident scene) to Galway. It tells me it’s 77.2kms and should take 1 hour and 18 minutes. Factor in that they possibly had to stop several times to carry out an intervention (IO, IV access, possibly defibrillate the patient), PLUS according to the article they went via Ballinasloe hospital (for further interventions possibly?), then the trip could take 2 hours.

We don’t drive 140kph on roads that aren’t motorways, this would only add to problems. A steady and safe transport is what we try achieve, because we have the skills to stabilise the patient en route. This gives the best outcome.

By the way guys, I’m not making excuses here for Roscommon A&E being closed, I’m really not, but if the had originally went to Roscommon judging by the map, then they were driving AWAY from the Trauma Centre. As per my previous posts, if we have the skills to stabilise the casualty then we need to be heading towards definitive care at all times (if possible).

The reality is that neither the previous or current government are willing to invest properly in any services which to do not ‘make money’ in the short-term, hence they have always been willing to slash spending on education and health, because, while in the long-run the country will benefit from having a First World system in both areas, all they can focus on is the next budget around the corner, even when we were supposedly flush with money during the Celtic Tiger, school and hospital conditions were appalling, and will only get worse, nothing that is happening in Ireland makes sense any more.

This piece should be about what happened that Ballinasloe could not take patient and how the drivers got lost. Not about Roscommon.