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| Belfast to lose children's heart surgery unit | Belfast to lose children's heart surgery unit |
| (about 3 hours later) | |
| Children's heart surgery is set to cease in Northern Ireland, with services moved south of the border to Dublin. | Children's heart surgery is set to cease in Northern Ireland, with services moved south of the border to Dublin. |
| The health service in Northern Ireland has recommended an all-island service, after a review concluded that heart surgery at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children was no longer sustainable. | The health service in Northern Ireland has recommended an all-island service, after a review concluded that heart surgery at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children was no longer sustainable. |
| Last year a separate report said centres across the UK should each perform a minimum of 400 children's surgical procedures a year to maintain skills, and Belfast falls short of that number. | Last year a separate report said centres across the UK should each perform a minimum of 400 children's surgical procedures a year to maintain skills, and Belfast falls short of that number. |
| It is expected that children who require surgery will travel to Our Lady's children's hospital in Dublin instead. Health ministers in both Northern Ireland and the Republic indicated on Thursday that they would approve the move. | |
| The internal review of heart surgery in Belfast had suggested shifting operations to Birmingham. Edwin Poots, the Democratic Unionist health minister in the Stormont power-sharing executive, said people should "welcome the fact that we're now talking about Dublin and not Birmingham". | |
| Poots said it was "an impossible ask" to retain full children's heart surgery in Northern Ireland because the numbers of procedures carried out each year fell short of what was required of a sustainable service. | |
| His counterpart in Dublin, James Reilly, said: "When it comes to national health issues I think we tend to put politics aside to get a better outcome for our patients." | |
| Dr Conor Mulholland, chairman of the Children's Heartbeat Trust, which has campaigned to retain children's heart surgery in Belfast, said the decision was "ill-informed and ill-advised". | |
| Mulholland, a retired paediatric cardiologist, said some patients' lives could be put at risk by transporting them 100 miles south to Dublin. | |
| Joanne Clifford, a member of the trust and parent of a child who underwent heart surgery in Belfast soon afterbirth, said she would not have been able to travel with her child to Dublin after receiving an emergency caesarean. | |
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