Another bleak January has predictably produced yet another crisis for our health service, with ordinary citizens placed at unacceptable risk and facing grim and possibly fatal consequences in a range of areas.
It may well be that the disturbing sequence of events will deteriorate even further, with, as we reported yesterday, a senior consultant predicting that “disaster” could follow if flu cases continue to rise.
Dr David Farren, who chairs a key regional committee of the British Medical Association, said pressures on the service were already at unprecedented levels, with seriously ill people routinely waiting for up to five days for treatment.
He said demoralised staff were doing everything they could to respond, but starkly concluded that “...there isn’t the space, there isn’t the resources and to be honest there isn’t the energy.”
According to the latest figures, across Northern Ireland, 374 people were in queues for more than 12 hours in emergency departments by midnight on Tuesday, with 383 waiting for admission to a hospital bed.
Some of the human stories which have emerged in recent days are highly disturbing, with, as the BBC has highlighted, one Belfast man who suffered a cardiac arrest outside the Royal Victoria Hospital’s emergency department, after his bowel had perforated at home, being advised to take painkillers as he would have to wait hours for an ambulance.
Brian Rooney (35) has since been in an induced coma following emergency surgery, which resulted in the removal of his intestine, and is said to be in a critical but stable condition, with the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) offering an apology.
There was also huge concern over Mary Donaghy, who spent over seven hours waiting in an ambulance outside the same hospital after her car was involved in a head-on collision after hitting black ice in the north of the city on Monday.
She was cut from the car by the emergency services but relatives said she was left freezing and in terrible pain before she could be eventually admitted to the emergency department trauma area for treatment.
The overall steps which must be taken by the authorities, crucially including the full delivery of the Bengoa Report, with its specific recommendations for transforming health and social care which embarrassingly have been awaiting implementation since 2016, should be clear.
There is evidence that the Stormont health committee is at long last focusing closely on practical and achievable plans for reform in the short term, but the time for discussions is over.
Action is required as a matter of the utmost urgency, and vulnerable people cannot be allowed to face another winter of anguish.
