Parents angry at HSE as tot's heart operation is cancelled
Catherine Murphy at home in Davidstown with her young son Jake.
THE PARENTS of a young child who needs heart surgery are outraged that their son was turned away from an operating theatre, at a time when the chief of the HSE is getting a ¤70,000 bonus.
Young Jake Cloke is currently back home in Davidstown, after Crumlin Children's Hospital was unable to provide him with an intensive care bed. The fourteenmonth-old was all geared up for life-changing surgery but his operation was cancelled at the last minute.
Now his parents Catherine Murphy and Ken Cloke have begun a campaign in a bid to ensure that no other families have to endure such trauma.
After Jake, who has Down Syndrome, was born last year it was discovered that he had a holes in his heart which was threatening to cause the little boy serious problems.
Parents Catherine and Ken were told that open heart surgery was required and that it must be carried out before their son is eighteen months old.
The family headed to Dublin on Monday October 5 and they were told that he was second in the queue for surgery but was turned away practically at the theatre door – because there was nowhere to look after him post-op.
He is booked to return in a few weeks time but the hospital authorities have made it clear they cannot be certain that the same thing will not happen again.
'It is not Crumlin's fault,' says Catherine Murphy, who notes that 1,000 operations a year are cancelled annually at the children's hospital. She puts the blame firmly on the HSE who paid out a ¤70,000 bonus to chief executive Brendan Drumm on the day that Jake's surgery was called off.
