Madam, - Although the requirements for reducing deaths from breast cancer in Ireland were accepted by Government many years ago, it was not until Mary Harney became Minister for Health and Children that efforts were made to implement recommendations in a systematic fashion for women with breast complaints. She rapidly accepted the need for specialist breast centres.
She established an expert group to specify quality measures so that the performance of centres could be assessed, compared and judged against the highest prevailing standards.
When launching the report of the expert group in May this year, she expressed her determination to develop and designate the centres, a decision that followed shortly afterwards.
She has supported strongly the extension of BreastCheck, the National Breast Screening Programme, soon to become a nationwide service. She enlisted the talented and experienced cancer specialist, Prof Tom Keane, from Canada, to guide the development of the national cancer strategy, in which services for breast cancer are a large component.
The medical profession and all who specialise in cancer welcome the initiative of the Minister. They are anxious to assist and support Prof Keane in improving services for women with breast cancer. He has a right to expect such co-operation. One of his most urgent tasks will be to engage with those who treat patients - an engagement long overdue by the HSE - so that multidisciplinary and multiprofessional care can become coherent. A patient with breast cancer should be able to feel confident that she is being cared for in a personal and dedicated way by trained and skilful experts at each stage of what is often a complex pathway of treatment. The elements of excellence exist in Ireland where we have trained, expert and compassionate personnel but a system of cancer care is lacking.
The Minister has taken major decisions to improve breast cancer care. Her decisions are not only courageous but they are necessary and should be supported.
Recent events have made the need for improvement plain to everybody. The opportunity must be taken now. If not, we may continue to "get by" but will never achieve the improvements in survival and quality of life that can be reached with certainty when integrated care is provided in specialist breast centres. - Yours, etc,
NIALL O'HIGGINS,
Professor Emeritus of Surgery,
University College Dublin,
Dublin 4.
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Madam, - I believe Mary Harney is being very poorly, and very unfairly, treated at present. Throughout a career in politics she has demonstrated an integrity and a level of courage manifestly not generally associated with the Irish understanding of that profession.
Now she stands, almost alone, in her attempts to reform the health service against a massed array of vested, self-serving interests, not least of which are the very people she is attempting to help but who reject the idea that they should incur some travel in order to get the best service that can be made available to serve the country as a whole.
She has to battle against the varied legacies of her predecessors who took the easy way out, time and again, for narrow sectional motives.
Your own actions, madam, in publishing non-flattering front page photographs of our Minister for Health at this time, in the midst of a crisis not of her making, are unworthy of your newspaper. - Yours, etc,
SÉAMUS McKENNA,
Dundrum,
Dublin 14.
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Madam, - The British tax authorities lose large amounts of personal data due to failures by junior staff in operating the system for transferring information securely between offices. Paul Gray, the head of HM Revenue and Customs, accepts responsibility and resigns immediately. Over a hundred women are left in unspeakable distress due to failures within the breast cancer diagnosis system at Portlaoise Hospital, and failures by the hospital to communicate with patients following misdiagnosis concerns.
For some women, delays in diagnosis have already had serious health implications; others may also suffer. Senior management staff at the hospital do not resign. The head of the Health Service Executive does not resign. The Minister for Health does not resign. Will anybody ever accept responsibility for serious failures in our health system? - Yours, etc,
Senator IVANA BACIK,
Seanad Éireann,
Leinster House,
Dublin 2.
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Madam, - If we lived in a healthy democracy, Mary Harney would do the decent and honourable thing and resign. But Mary Harney will never resign. It is really not a matter of life and death for her and the PDs. It is far more serious than that. It is all about PD survival in Government, never mind honour and decency or how many patients die. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK O'BYRNE,
Shandon Crescent ,
Phibsborough,
Dublin 7.