Workers Party Councillor Ted Tynan has expressed concern about repeated breakdowns of radiotherapy machines at Cork University Hospital. Although replacement machines have long been promised the older machines are still being used and breakdowns are a regular occurrence.
In November 2013 Cllr. Tynan raised the issue at a meeting of the HSE South Forum where he said that frontline radiotherapy services at CUH were being compromised because outdated equipment had not been replaced in a timely manner due to budget cuts. At that time a number of patients had contacted the Workers’ Party councillor informing him that the radiotherapy unit was only operational three days a week due to machines breaking down. The situation has not noticeably improved since then.
Cllr. Tynan said that the number of radiotherapy treatment centres should be increased from three locations (Dublin, Cork and Galway) to at least five as pressure of numbers is straining the system to breaking point. He said penny-pinching of vital services such as radiotherapy was completely unacceptable.
At present Cork University Hospital is providing radiotherapy treatment for patients from the entire HSE South area which is almost as big as the entire country of Belgium. Cllr. Tynan said that the urgent replacement of radiotherapy equipment in Cork needed to be coupled with the restoration of a full public radiotherapy service in Waterford Regional Hospital.