Councillor urges locals to use Our Lady' 24-hour ED

A plea has gone out to the people of Navan and Meath to attend the Emergency Department (ED) at Our Lady's Hospital, Navan, for their illnesses and injuries, instead of making unnecessary trips to Drogheda or Blanchardstown. On a week where a record 58 patients were lying on trolleys in the ED in Drogheda, Cllr Jamal urged the people of Meath to use their local hospital, which has a fully functioning 24-hour ED. "It is fully staffed and is looking after patients from minor injuries and fractures to strokes and heart attacks," she said. Cllr Jamal said if she ever had a heart attack or stroke, she would immediately go to Our Lady's in Navan. "Because I know that the service is so efficient and I would be given clot-busting medication within 20 minutes and be transferred to Dublin for angioplasty within the hour, if required," she added. Cllr Jamal said her major concern was that, due to a lot of scaremongering in recent months regarding the downgrading of services in Our Lady's Hospital, people now had a wrong perception that their illnesses and injuries cannot be treated in Navan and they go directly to Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda. "Unfortunately, sometimes local GPs also send them directly to Drogheda and Blanchardstown, giving them the reason that there is not much happening in Navan. This could not be further from the truth. There has been no downgrading of Navan emergency services and this in not likely to happen in the foreseeable future," she added. She said that during her election campaign, she had assured people that Navan ED would stay open. "It is still open two-and-half years later and I am very positive that this will be the case next year also," she said. Cllr Jamal predicted that elective surgery will return to Our Lady's within the next four weeks. "There is also a state-of-the-art computerised x-ray system being installed in the hospital, including the Emergency Department in the next two weeks. "Funding has been made available to keep medical staffing levels optimal in the Emergency Department. These are all positive signs and I have always been of the view that we can only save our hospital by staying positive, working closely with the HSE and hospital staff and by continuing to use the services available, including 24 hour Emergency Department," she added. Cllr Jamal said it was agreed with Health Minister Dr James Reilly and HSE officials a few months ago that communication channels are kept open. "Unfortunately, this approach does not suit the political agenda of the Save Navan Hospital campaign which is dominated by one political party. They started the campaign a few months before the last general election, and are still scaremongering and promoting negativity which results in people staying away from the hospital and not using the facilities which are there and likely to be there in the foreseeable future. This then results in under-use of services, giving the authorities an excuse to downgrade or close the," she added. "I am extremely disappointed that this situation has been allowed to continue and people need to remember that this negative attitude and scaremongering could not save Monaghan Hospital and Dundalk Hospital," she said. Personally, she said she would love to see a new super-hospital being built, but realistically in the current climate, this was likely to be several years away. "I think that, for the foreseeable future, putting our energy into actually saving Navan Hospital and ensuring that the services we have there remain there and encouraging people to use them would be much better served than this constant negativity for political personal gain," she added.