Over 350 People Are Dying Each Year Because Of Irish A&E Overcrowding

The Irish Association for Emergency Medicine (IAEM) has claimed that an estimated figure of around 350 people are dying each year as a direct result of the overcrowding of the country's Emergency Departments.

The group stated how deeply disappointing it was for them to say that on the day of the Budget, a total of 438 patients languished on trolleys in Ireland’s acute hospitals.

Budget day 2016 - no improvement for ED crowding, see @AssocEmergMedIE press release https://t.co/6NlOl10zLl pic.twitter.com/ab6jAOMxOt

— IAEM (@AssocEmergMedIE) October 12, 2016

Dr Fergal Hickey, a consultant in emergency medicine at Sligo University Hospital, announced that the problem is costing lives and creating misery throughout.

We have large numbers of patients on trolleys and we know that in this situation, mortality goes up and the estimate is that about 350 patients per year die unnecessarily as a direct result of emergency department crowding. 

And this is the equivalent of two of the planes that fly from Ireland to Britain on a regular basis falling out of the sky every year, and yet nobody is actually dealing with the problem.

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