A do-nothing Programme for a do-nothing Executive

A couple of weeks back, the sixth Northern Ireland Executive released its draft Programme for Government. Coming over six months after the Executive was formed in February, following a gap in office of around two years, a naive observer might have had high hopes for this document, especially given that, during the election campaign in 2022, most of the parties talked up a good game about getting the government up and running.  The UUP manifesto said : it is vital …

Read more…

The Hope of Possibility

My Dad died two days before Christmas. I was on my way up to see him when I got a missed call and a text from my brother telling me he’d passed away. He had pancreatic cancer. The time between diagnosis and death is often short. Before you’ve had time to wrap your head around the fact that your loved one is ill, they are gone.  The shock of the loss is as sharp and painful as the grief. How …

Read more…

The end of free GP access in Northern Ireland is in sight

A couple of years back, I was chatting to a friend of a friend who is a GP. Like, I suspect, most of us, I had (and still have) a fairly limited understanding of the nuts and bolts of how healthcare is actually provided in Northern Ireland, and he spent a bit of time explaining it to me. I was quite surprised to discover, for example, that GP surgeries are actually private businesses. They’re almost exclusively organised as partnerships, a …

Read more…

Tackling isolation

Isolation and loneliness amongst older people are serious problems that worsened during the pandemic. While people are living longer, often this involves one partner surviving the other. Sometimes the result can be not only unhappiness, but also additional pressures on GPs and hospitals, as the person has nowhere else to turn. Loneliness has such far-reaching consequences that the health impact is comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, according to one study, and is associated with an increased …

Read more…

The domestic violence crisis

face, eyes, abuse

Women in Northern Ireland are twice as likely to be murdered as a result of domestic violence than in the other UK nations. In some years, almost half of Northern Ireland murders are connected to domestic violence. In the 2022/23 year, of 17 homicides there were eight that resulted from domestic violence against women. Northern Ireland is also an outlier in international terms. While Finland has the highest rate of femicide by a partner, Northern Ireland is joint second with …

Read more…

Flaming July – the evidence is clear that climate change is happening…

trees on fire

Only the most devoted conspiracy theorist could deny climate change given the devastating events of recent weeks. Spring was marked by deadly fires in Canada, terrible floods in Northern Italy and even an unfamiliar heatwave in Northern Ireland. Now things have got even more deadly, with awful new fire outbreaks in Greece, Italy Algeria and Tunisia. And a severe worsening of ice melting in the Antarctic. Meanwhile, the drought and loss of agricultural land in the Horn of Africa is …

Read more…

‘It’s about life and death’: Frampton vs Kielty

As the finale event of the Docs Ireland film festival, boxing legend Carl Frampton and comedian/presenter Patrick Kielty had a one-to-one conversation with an audience of over a hundred at the Cineworld complex, interspersed with clips from their documentary films and interviews with others on the topics of Northern Ireland’s contentious past and outlooks for the future. The first clip was from Frampton’s “Men in Crisis”, where his interviewee Ryan (22:54) discusses his emotions in dealing with the suicide of …

Read more…

Wegovy: panacea for our obesity epidemic?

a man holding his stomach with his hands

With 66% of population of the UK and Ireland overweight or obese and the national Health Services all too aware while largely ignoring this fact, we are facing into a significant public health crisis that is already with us. Wygovey is a medicine everyone knows, or will know soon enough, and is being promoted as the panacea for our corpulence and being identified as a game changer. Wegovy is the most famous medicine we don’t have. Yet in the absence …

Read more…

Keir Starmer’s health plans will need to address my sweet tooth…

burger beside fried potatoes with drinking glass

Keir Starmer, preparing for office, is setting out his stall on policy and last week addressed Labour’s plans for the Health Service which essentially means England as Health is devolved. But any policies by a UK government at Westminster will affect us here if only in future Health Service investments and policy direction. The current health service, which for us includes social care, seems insatiable when it comes to funding so throwing money at this problem alone is not going to …

Read more…

Trashing the environment

Just five miles from Derry’s city centre, on the suburban edge of the Waterside, is the site of one of the worst environmental crimes in UK history. It has been described as Europe’s largest illegal waste dump, which may be an exaggeration, but it is certainly one of the very biggest. The Mobuoy waste dump runs across both sides of Derry’s Mobuoy Road. It covers 116 acres and contains one million tonnes of illegally buried rubbish. While the company running …

Read more…

Nursing student places in Northern Ireland is to be cut by 300…

person wearing gold wedding band

Our health service continues its bleak journey to hell in a handcart. The latest death by a thousand scalpel cuts is the news that they are cutting 300 student nurses places. You can guess the reason – budget cuts. I can hear you thinking, hold on a minute do we not need MORE nurses? Why yes indeed you would be right. We have almost 3,000 vacant nursing posts in the health service in Northern Ireland. If the health service was …

Read more…

6 Weeks with the NHS…

black and gray stethoscope

Criticising the NHS and promoting private health care as the answer has been in the news recently. According to the chair of the Royal College of GPs in Northern Ireland there has been a “significant rise” in patients having their “health needs met in the private sector”. Considering how bad the queues are for some treatments by the NHS, this is not surprising. When you see a relative in significant pain for well over a year with no end in …

Read more…

Sixth opportunity to elect an Assembly Speaker fails as Dáithí watches from the public gallery

SF vice president Michelle O'Neill looks on as press photographers snap pictures of Daithi Mac Gabhann in the Great Hall of Parliament Buildings

With the morning mist still lingering over east Belfast, the Northern Ireland Assembly met at noon. The first item of business was – as always in this long series of recalls – the election of the Speaker and (at least two) Deputy Speakers. Letters from Speaker Alex Maskey ahead of the sitting had reminded MLAs that their order, language and debate should be constructive and that Points of Order should not be abused. Many MLAs walked down the steps into …

Read more…

Systems differ and patients die…

person sitting while using laptop computer and green stethoscope near

The failure of healthcare information support systems to provide a fully integrated and portable digitised personal medical history to aid healthcare professionals in making timely and efficient diagnostic, treatment and care decisions has become an open sore in Irish society, leading to much public debate. I felt moved to share my experience of such systems in the Irish Times: A chara, – Nearly 20 years ago I was asked to review the implementation of a digital patient record system at …

Read more…

Fat Profits or a Fat Lip for Novo Nordisk?

white round medication pill on yellow surface

Annual continuing professional development (CPD) is a requirement for most professions including pharmacy. Keeping up-to-date with our art and craft is essential to keeping our customers and patients safe. There is considerable freedom for individual pharmacists to choose what subjects they wish to complete in the required 30 hours of CPD in a given year and drug manufacturers have always been a useful and convenient source of lectures and seminars. The Sunday Times (Feb 5th 2023 p11) reports that a …

Read more…

Why hydrogen can’t solve our climate change problems

Hydrogen

One of the conversation points that I often encounter in the debate around climate change and the move to net zero/energy independence is the role that could be played by hydrogen. Like many of the other aspects of this debate, it is poorly understood, particularly among the press and policymakers.  What is hydrogen ? Chemically, it is the simplest and most plentiful element in the universe, having one proton and one electron. It’s thought that, along with a small number …

Read more…

Whether Jesus or The Expectation Effect, miracles do happen…

crepuscular rays beyond trees under blue sky

A friend of many years sought my help in 2019 for what seemed, judging by the symptoms, to be uncomplicated heartburn. He worked in hospitality and he worked hard with plenty of stress as he was self-employed and an employer. Initially over-the-counter omeprazole and Gaviscon managed the symptoms but they returned aggressively at which point I insisted he visit his GP as weight-loss was also becoming apparent. The GP immediately referred him to hospital where a progressed lesion in his …

Read more…

Health Crisis: “When you don’t have political leadership, you don’t get decisions..”

bridge, autumn, nature

This is a useful addendum to my post on Friday, which highlighted the deleterious effect of political boycotting of the only institutions that can deliver real change both in the here and now and in the longer term for four out of the last six years. John Compton, author of the previous report the joint first ministers of the DUP and Sinn Féin also chose to ignore, Transforming Your Care had this to say about the total absence of any real …

Read more…

NI politics still mired in fear and loathing largely because it remains stubbornly unaccountable…

Have you noticed how weird the democratic world is getting (yes, outside Northern Ireland)? The UK has had three PMs in as many months, and now the US Congress is being to ransom by a caucus of no more than 5% of Representatives. The world (not just the UK) is getting more and more like Northern Ireland where we’re never sure what we want but we are sure as clear about what we don’t want. One common link between all …

Read more…

The dreaded lurgy sweeps across the country…

white ceramic mug on white table beside black eyeglasses

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I think I am a character in some kind of Sims game, and we all live in a collective illusion. Occasionally you see glitches in the Matrix, like when you pull up at the lights, and there are three other red Golfs next to you. Whatever God or Monster currently controlling us has decided to shake things up. When the health service is particularly on its knees, it unleashes a wave of lurgy …

Read more…