healthcare
PHOTOS Mid-West Hospital Campaign launches ‘Drive to Save Lives’ to highlight ongoing health crisis
Drive to Save Lives is organised by the Mid-West Hospital Campaign who have organised several protests in Limerick such as the one pictured above in January 2023.
Drive to Save Lives takes place on Saturday, April 13 from Ennis, Nenagh, and Limerick
The Mid-West Hospital Campaign (MWHC) has announced a ‘Drive to Save Lives’ to highlight the ongoing health crisis in the region. A convoy of vehicles will set off on Saturday, April 13 from Ennis, Nenagh, and Limerick city to mark the 15th anniversary of the closure of the region’s three A&Es.
People are being encouraged to take part with their car, van, tractor, motorcycle, or bike. If people in Limerick don’t have a mode of transport they are encouraged to line the route as the convoy travels through the city on its way past University Hospital Limerick (UHL) and onto its conclusion at the office of the HSE CEO in the Raheen Industrial Estate.
Activist with the Mid-West Hospital Campaign, Mary Cahillane, said: “It’s fifteen years since the so-called reconfiguration plan shut the emergency departments in Ennis, Nenagh, and St. John’s Hospital. By any metric it has been an unmitigated disaster. UHL is consistently the most overcrowded A&E in the country. We have one emergency department to cover 425,000 people, under these circumstances ‘reconfiguration’ cannot be made to work.
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“When the new Fine Gael leader Simon Harris visited University Hospital Limerick in 2017, there were 47 people on trollies. He said that something needed to be done about it. Today, there are consistently over 100 people left on trollies every day! We want to say loud and clear for Mr. Harris that the time for action is way overdue, people are dying as a result of these conditions. We’re calling on him to reverse ‘reconfiguration’ and reopen the closed A&Es.”
Speaking about the planned convoy, another activist from the campaign Charlotte Keane said: “Unfortunately, it feels like people in the Mid-West are not being heard. So we must make ourselves visible. We’re calling on Limerick people to come out in force on the 13th April to join the convoy through the city or line the route and cheer it on as it passes. We will be leaving from St. John’s Hospital from around 12pm on the day to join up with convoys coming from Ennis and Nenagh, and together the people of the Mid-West will travel down O’Connell Street and past UHL on our way to a rally outside Houston Hall in Raheen Industrial Estate where the HSE CEO Bernard Gloster has an office.
“The HSE and Government need to know that we have had enough. This protest will be loud and it will be just the start. Mr. Gloster, Mr. Harris – the people of the Mid-West will be heard!”
Pictures: Adriana Trevizan/ilovelimerick
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