IRELAND
Irish Times
Patsy McGarry
In a weekend interview the Master at Holles Street Hospital in Dublin, Rhona Mahony, was clear. The need for the new National Maternity Hospital at St Vincent’s in Elm Park, owing to conditions at Holles Street, was “unarguable”, “unassailable”, “a simple, clinical imperative”, she said.
“It would be terrible if it was stopped because of a sideshow. When the next woman dies, how will the conversation go then?” Indeed. And “there’s the rub”, as Hamlet might say, the nub of this “sideshow.”
Speaking of “the next woman” in this context Dr Mahony may have been referring to Savita Halappanavar, the 31-year-old Indian woman who died in October 2012 at University Hospital Galway a week after she was found to be miscarrying.Her husband, Praveen, said she asked several times over three days for a termination and this was refused because the foetal heartbeat was still present and, as one midwife said, “this is a Catholic country”.
One of Dr Mahony’s predecessors as Master at Holles St, Dr Peter Boylan, was an expert witness at an inquiry and at the inquest into Halappanavar’s death.
Clearly he too is anxious that there will be no “next woman” to die in circumstances similar to those in which Halappanavar lost her life.
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