Danny Healy-Rae: Calls for State Funding for Cancer Transport
Danny Healy-Rae speaks about access to cancer services in Kerry, the long travel distances rural patients face, and a call for state funding of volunteer patient transport. He highlights the need for local oncology services at University Hospital Kerry (UHK), thanks voluntary drivers, and stresses early diagnosis and treatment.
Key points: Danny Healy-Rae outlines how patients in Cahersiveen, Dingle, Lork and other parts of Kerry often travel long distances-50 to 60 miles to Tralee and over 100 miles to Cork-for treatment. He thanks voluntary drivers who assist patients for chemo and argues the state should fund that essential service.
Local impact: He describes personal encounters with cancer patients and the emotional toll on families, noting that many in Kerry have died young. He emphasises that when someone gets cancer they should be entitled to full medical care regardless of income or ability to work.
Requests to health services: He draws attention to the HSE-approved Comfort for Chemo project and a promised expansion of oncology services at UHK that remains awaited. He urges the state to recognise and fund the transport service that helps patients reach treatment.
Broader concerns: He stresses the importance of early diagnosis and early treatment for better outcomes. He also raises worries about possible causes, including comments on South American beef in relation to Irish beef, calling for attention to what might be contributing to cancer rates.
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Like every other county in Ireland and I suppose across the world, Kerry has its fair share of cancer patients and sadly many of those have passed on at a young age and as a public representative indeed I come across more than my share of those from day to day and I have to say that Kerry is lucky in many ways because of the distance because if you get cancer in Cahersiveen or Dingle or Lork or any one of those places, you're 50, 60 miles away from Tralee in the first instance and over 100 miles to Cork and Kerry has been promised in the grounds of UHK Oncology Services and we're still waiting and Comfort for Chemo in Kerry has done a lot of funding raised for this and the HSE has approved this project and you see this would help a lot of people who are presently travelling to Dublin or to Cork to see UH and at this stage I want to thank the cancer boss, the treatment boss that takes people on their way for treatment for chemo or whatever and it's voluntary funded and I think we should, if anything deserves public funding, the boss that's taking patients for treatment should be funded by the state. When a person gets sick and gets cancer they should be entitled to a medical care full stop because whatever means you have or whatever, you have children and you're not able to work and you need a medical care to pay for the treatment otherwise you're just treated as a second class citizen and people feel like that. Early diagnosis is of paramount importance and early treatment and we need to ensure that that happens in every case, every whole case and the other thing we must look at is see what's causing it. I've been saying that the South American beef invented in the same way as Irish beef and I'm worried about that. For more UN videos visit www.un.org
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