Virus heightens beds crisis

Patients are being forced to wait on trolleys

Pressure on hospitals in Northern Ireland is mounting as the result of a virus which has left people waiting on trollies for beds and caused a severe backlog in surgery.

It comes as the hospitals struggle to cope with an increased number of patients because of winter illnesses.

A gastroenteritis virus, which causes sickness and diarrhoea, is believed to be affecting patients and staff in four main hospitals in the province.

About 50 people at the hospitals are now waiting on trollies for a bed to become available.

Bairbre de Brun spoke of underfunding

Patients and staff in Lagan Valley Hospital in Lisburn and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast were affected by the virus before Christmas, putting 100 beds out of use.

On Monday morning, the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald, outside Belfast, said it had closed eight beds to new patients amid fears it had the virus.

That afternoon, Craigavon Area Hospital in County Armagh said it was suffering from an outbreak of the virus, but could not afford to close beds.

A range of measures have been put in place to help cut the number of trolley waits and to reduce the impact of the virus on hospital beds.

Northern Ireland Health Minister Bairbre de Brun said the problem was one of underfunding.

"Not only has there been a fundamental problem of not enough resources being made available, but that has happened year on year for a long number of years," she told BBC Radio Ulster.

"It means we now need to build capacity - in terms of beds, of equipment, of staff and there has not yet been the level of resources that would allow me to sort this problem fully.

"That is being reflected within our hospitals and within the community."

She said there was no question of any department money not being put to the best possible use.

"The real investment that is needed is not happening.

"We are putting the money in where it is needed. What we can't do is train doctors overnight, or reverse overnight the difficulties in some of the areas."

The minister said that since she came to office she had put in place extra intensive care and high dependency unit beds as well as additional nurses.

Earlier, the hospitals' crisis was described as being at "melting point" following the cancellation of all non-emergency surgery at Craigavon Area Hospital due to record bed shortages.

Patients spent over 36 hours on trolleys in corridors waiting for beds over the weekend.

The cancellation in surgery was caused by medical patients occupying trolley space in the hospital's recovery area.

Emergency operations such as those for cancer patients were still going ahead.

Dr Peter Maguire:"The service is at meltdown"

The chairman of the British Medical Association's Junior Doctors' Committee, Dr Peter Maguire, said the service was at breaking point.

"It has been absolutely unbelievable. When I arrived for work on Saturday, the casualty department was nothing short of a war zone with patients lying everywhere.

"The recovery ward had patients who were medically ill. Normally this ward is full of patients who are post operative who have had their surgery.

"However, surgery could not commence because of medical patients being there."

Dr Maguire said it was time the Department of Health addressed what he called the "humanitarian crisis" within the service.

Transfer patients

"The BMA have been predicting melt down in the health service for a couple of months at this stage, well we are now in the meltdown phase," said Dr Maguire.

"We can do a job but we are just not capable of doing it because of system failure and a gross under resourcing of our service by the Department of Health over a long period of time.

"There are short term and long term solutions The short term solution is we need humanitarian aid to be brought to the people who are suffering.

"But longer term we need real planning to make sure that this never happens again."