Playing politics with childrens health

A Crumlin Hospital patient support group has claimed health service management is playing politics with the health of child patients.

The Save Our Lady's Hospital Campaign was commenting after it was revealed by irishhealth.comtoday that the HSE has in recent weeks written to Crumlin asking it what it intends to do about the fact that over 100 children remain on open heart surgery waiting lists.

The HSE pointed out to the hospital in a letter on September 28 that 25 of the children on the waiting list were in need of urgent surgery.

Teresa Shallow of the Save Our Lady's Hospital Campaign said it would appear that the HSE was now trying to place all the blame for the waiting lists on the hospital, which has implemented major cutbacks this year to stay within its budget.

She pointed out that while bed closures at Crumlin were partly to blame for the long cardiac surgery waiting list, the problems there predated this year's cutbacks.

Ms Shallow said the lack of intensive care capacity at Crumlin was a major contributory factor to the heart surgery waiting lists, and the HSE had failed to act on a report completed last year which showed that major expansion of ICU capacity at the hospital was needed.

She said the problems with ICU capacity at the hospital existed long before this year's cutbacks were implemented.

The cutbacks imposed at Crumlin included the closure of a 25-bed ward and an operating theatre, along with the curtailment of staffing and outpatient clinics.

irishhealth.com has also revealed that the deficit for 2009 estimated by the hospital at the end of April was €3.1 million, before many of the cutbacks were made, whereas it was being stated publicly at the time that there was a deficit of €9 million.

Documentation released under FOI also reveals that Crumlin Hospiutal now plans to break even on its budget at the end of the year and the HSE now wants it to-reopen the operating theatre it closed earlier in the year.

Ms Shallow said there had been conflicting figures thrown about in recent months about the level of Crumlin's deficit, with the Department of Health/HSE and the hospital producing different figures.

She said it appeared that management at the HSE and the hospital were trying to blame each other for the problems at Crumlin, and that politics was being played with the health of children.

Ms Shallow said the Save Our Lady's Hospital group was due to meet with Crumlin management at the end of the month.

"We will be seeking clarification on what exactly the hospital's deficit was this year and whether the cuts that were made had to be made."

Ms Shallow said that while it had been confirmed that the new children's hospital to replace the exixting three hospitals would be built by 2014, this would not help Crumlin's position here and now.

When Fulbright Scholar Dr. Mukhtasar Syamsuddin

When Fulbright Scholar Dr. Mukhtasar Syamsuddin discusses the “Muslim World,” he has several different world to discuss.

“The Islamic culture is the only one in the world based on the Koran, but the Muslim culture is a social construct,” he said. “There are Muslim Americans, Muslim Canadians, Muslim Arabs, Muslim Indonesians.”
Syamsuddin, a Muslim Indonesian, will share these worlds with Northeastern State University over the next six weeks through the Fulbright Visiting Specialists Program. Syamsuddin is the first Fulbright Scholar to be hosted by NSU.
Established in 1946, the Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program.
Syamsuddin teaches philosophy and philosophy of religion at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia. Theme of his Fulbright visit is “Direct Access to the Muslim World.”
Garments Syamsuddin said he wears in his home country reflect what he said was the diversity of Muslim culture.
Holding his hands to his shoulders, Syamsuddin explained “the clothes you wear must cover your body from here to your foot. You have to do this primarily when you go to pray.
Syamsuddin wore a wrap-around sarong in two hues of green to show what Indonesian Muslim men wear. Muslim men in Arabia usually wear looser floor length robe-like garments he said. Syamsuddin also wears trousers.
He said Muslim women in Indonesia wear headscarves, but “they’re just closing up their hair, not closing up their eyes.”
“In Iran, women close up all of their body but their eyes,” he said.
Syamsuddin said he also will spend his six-week visit clarifying Islamic terms such as “jihad,” which, he said, are misunderstood.
“Jihad is to do your religious commitments truly,” he said. “It does not mean you have to fight against another Muslim or another person. Terrorism is not an expression of jihad.”
He said jihad is a misunderstood word “not just in America, but in the Islamic world itself.”
He said Islamic terrorists see unbelievers as the enemy and have tried to kill them.
“”But according to Islamic teaching, the unbeliever is not the enemy,” he said. “One Islamic teaching is to keep their life in harmony, not in conflict and not to kill.”

Phoenix

UN rights council endorses damning Gaza report

By Hui Min Neo

GENEVA — The UN Human Rights Council endorsed a report on Friday that accused Israel and the Palestinian hardliners Hamas of war crimes in the Gaza conflict, dealing a fresh diplomatic blow to the Jewish state.
While Israel had said such a move would be tantamount to "rewarding terror", the Palestinians welcomed the resolution which it said should be the trigger for follow-up action from the UN Security Council.
Some 25 of the council's 47 members, led by the Arab and African states, voted for the resolution. Six, including the United States, voted against while 16 others either abstained or did not vote.
The resolution calls for the endorsement of "the recommendations contained in the report" produced by a fact-finding mission led by international war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone to probe the 22-day conflict.
It also "calls upon all concerned parties including United Nations bodies, to ensure their implementation."
Israel slams 'unjust' report
Goldstone concluded that both Israel and Hamas, Gaza's rulers, committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the conflict launched by Israel in response to rocket fire from the enclave in late December 2008.
The report also recommends referring its conclusions to the International Criminal Court prosecutor in The Hague, if Israel and Hamas fail to conduct credible investigations within six months.
The vote came just two days after Israel and the Palestinians came under international pressure during a UN Security Council debate on the Middle East to produce "credible" domestic probes of war crimes allegedly committed during the Gaza conflict.
Welcoming the outcome, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the international action should not end there.
"We hope this will be followed up in the UN Security Council to ensure such Israeli crimes are not repeated," Erakat told AFP.
While there was no immediate response from Israel, its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier urged the council to reject the resolution.
"Responsible nations have to vote against this decision that supports terror and harms peace," Netanyahu told reporters after a meeting with visiting Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero late Thursday.
Explaining Washington's reasons for opposing the resolution, US ambassador Douglas Griffiths said: "We had worked for a resolution that recognized the right of a state to take legitimate action to protect its citizens in the face of threats to their security while also condemning violations of international law regardless of the actor.
"Regrettably, this is not the resolution that is before us today."
The Islamist movement Hamas is regarded by Israel and the West as a terrorist organisation after carrying out dozens of suicide attacks.
The conflict in Gaza, that erupted on 27 December 2008, left 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.
Meanwhile, Goldstone himself, who was in Bern for a conference Thursday, also criticised the UN Council resolution for targetting only Israel and failing to include Hamas.
The UN resolution is peppered with references to "recent Israeli violations of human rights in occupied east Jerusalem" but failed to make any direct mention to Hamas.
"This draft resolution saddens me as it includes only allegations against Isreal. There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report. I hope that the council can modify the text," said Goldstone in remarks published in Swiss newspaper Le Temps ahead of the vote.
On the Net:
UN Human Rights Council: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/