February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The case of Bronagh Livingstone, who was born in an ambulance that was transporting her mother, Denise, to Cavan General Hospital, 40 miles away, has been greeted in the Monaghan area by outrage and protests.
Maternity services were suspended at Monaghan General last year and when 32-year-old Denise Livingstone went into premature labor and arrived at the hospital at 5:15 a.m. on Dec. 11, she was refused admission and instead sent by ambulance to Cavan General Hospital, unaccompanied by a nurse or
doctor.
Protesters have taken to the streets and several hospital personnel have resigned. The incident has been highlighted in the Irish media as a further glaring example of the government’s incoherent health policy — service cutbacks led to the death of Bronagh Livingstone.
On the road to Cavan, Livingstone gave birth to Bronagh, who later died at Cavan hospital.
The Livingstone family, from Emyvale on the Monaghan-Tyrone border, has pointed the finger of blame at the government and the hospital’s administrators.
Denise Livingstone’s uncle Jimmy Livingstone said: “I hold two people to blame and to my dying day I will hold them to blame. And that is Micheal
Martin, our minister for health, and the chief executive of the North Eastern Health board.”
The case has highlighted in an unusually tragic way Ireland’s long-seated problems with health service funding and the government’s allocation of resources in areas outside of Dublin.
Independent experts reviewed the case for the minister for health, Micheal Martin, and attacked the situation that led to Bronagh’s death. But at the same time, a review carried out by the North Eastern Health Board, which is responsible for Monaghan hospital, argued that the decision to send Livingstone to Cavan was the correct one.
The independent experts said the ambulance personnel requested a midwife to accompany them but were told by a nurse that none was available.
The independent report also stated: “In our opinion Bronagh Livingstone’s birth was imminent shortly after she arrived at Monaghan General Hospital. Consequently, no attempt should have been made to transfer Ms. Livingstone to Cavan General Hospital prior to delivery.”
Minister Martin admitted that Livingstone’s case was “harrowing” and he ordered an immediate review of protocols to deal with emergency cases across
Ireland.
In the days after the infant’s death newspapers revealed that on a previous occasion a doctor at Monaghan hospital had been reprimanded for operating on an emergency pregnancy in similar circumstances.
A consultant anesthetist was on call the night that Livingstone came to the hospital in labor and, according to the independent report, should have been called to the scene.
The independent inquiry was terse in its findings: “The surgical SHO [senior house officer] did not, in our opinion, adequately examine Ms. Livingstone” in Monaghan. He did not believe she was in labor but believed she would be accompanied in the ambulance.”
The staff, the report continued, were “caught in the middle between their employer, the NEHB, local
factions within and outside of the hospital, and their loyalty and ties in the community. There is widespread anxiety and mistrust and not surprisingly this has affected staff confidence and morale … in such circumstances there is vulnerability to error.”
Adding insult to injury, further cutbacks in service at Monaghan General were announced for the New Year.
All parties in the dispute said they were considering legal action.