WestDoc, the weekend GP service, received a fraction of the urgent care calls it expected from rural areas of County Galway in the three days after Storm Éowyn.
Calls from large parts of Connemara were down by more than 75 per cent as district doctors, nursing home managers and patients could not find mobile coverage, and West Doc’s call centre staff in Galway city were unable to return communications to black-out areas to coordinate house visits.
The HSE-funded Friday-to-Monday service, which covers counties Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, received 12,000 urgent care calls last weekend after Storm Éowyn – a noticeable decrease on what its chief executive Brian O’Keefe would expect after an extreme weather event.
“Normally we do get fewer calls after a bad weather weekend because fewer people are out and about, or they decide they’ll wait until the weather passes to see the GP, but this time it was very, very different - unprecedented,” he said.
O’Keefe confirmed WestDoc received only five calls from south Connemara last weekend, and six from north Connemara. Normally nurses and call takers would expect between 20 and 60 calls from each of these rural districts per day after bad weather.
“We have three different back-up phone systems installed at our HQ in Galway city, a generator and 18 SUVs for our drivers who bring doctors and nurses to locations, and collect samples from them. The authorities need to look at providing satellite phones for at least one GP surgery in each district, or Primary Care Centres, so there is always a central place where we can guarantee communications,” he suggested.
Of the 11 treatment centres used by WestDoc over weekends, only two had electricity on Friday afternoon, according to O’Keefe.
Connemara GP, Dr Peter Sloane
Dr Peter Sloane, a GP in Carraroe, said he knows of two patients from his surgery who travelled to the Emergency Department of University Hospital Galway in the aftermath of the red weather warning lifted last Friday morning, as they could not phone any urgent medical service for advice over the weekend.
Social media postings indicate many inhabitants of certain areas between Spiddal, Clifden, Carna and Inverin had no mobile network at all, and were unable to place even emergency 999 or 112 calls between Friday and Wednesday this week.
Unconfirmed reports suggest VHF radio communications also dropped out last Friday along a stretch of the west coast, meaning Aran Islanders or ships at sea could not make emergency calls on Channel 16.
Dr Sloane met Minister for Social Protection and Rural and Community Development, Dara Calleary, when he visited Carraroe to inspect storm damage on Tuesday, and gave him a strong message to bring back to Government.
“I told the minister that mobile networks are crucial infrastructure,” he said, “I told him that maybe the government should take in-charge these masts which the network operators are not guaranteeing to work for emergency coverage. After no power and no water, no connectivity is a slap in the face, and many of my patients, especially the elderly and the vulnerable are – quite simply – scared.”
