October 2018

Health Service Executive 

Women and Infants Health Programme

We met with Dr. Peter McKenna, Clinical Director and Kilian McGrane, Programme Director of the National Women and Infants Health Programme (NWIHP) within the HSE in August 2017. They were both eager to fulfil our wish in Eibhlín’s Legacy, by offering their support and by encouraging all other Maternity Units within Ireland to follow the NMH’s lead in education and awareness. They subsequently went on to meet with the Master of the National Maternity Hospital. Sadly, there is no concrete update on this wish, recent correspondence with the NWIHP gave us an update –

Dr. McKenna and Aideen Quigley (Quality and Safety Lead) are studying the report they received from NMH to see if lessons can be applied nationally and sent into the system as a Learning Notice. Unfortunately, “Learning Notices” have a broad applicability rather than based on an individual case.

https://www.hse.ie/eng/about/who/acute-hospitals-division/woman-infants/quality-and-safety

needless to say, this is quite disheartening to read, to see if lessons can be applied and we would fear that Ireland would need more Neonatal HSV deaths for this to be considered a priority. It is a far cry from the promise and enthusiasm we received at our meeting in August 2017.