Ground broken on new CF rooms

Work got underway this week on the construction of two new rooms at Cavan General Hospital (CGH) capable of providing children with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) with dedicated paediatric in-patient accommodation.
Cavan has the second highest incidence rate of CF in the country and, at present, the local health facility cares for around 27 young people with the condition from across the region, which also includes counties Monaghan, Meath, Leitrim and Longford.
Work starting on the addition of the new rooms comes almost two years after a new dedicated outpatient suite for persons with respiratory illness at the hospital.
That moment was described by advocates attached to the Cavan branch of CF as a “watershed” moment for the county in the care of persons with CF.
The latest development is seen as no less significant by CF campaigner Lorraine O’Neill, whose daughter Mia lives with the condition. “It’s a massive moment. It’s unreal to see the soil being turned, after so much campaigning down through the years. We’ve walked, ran, climbed, cycled, quizzed, had coffee mornings, held music events, the list is endless - all to raise funding for this.”
Work at the site, which includes an extension to the paediatric department at first floor level and the reconfiguration of existing rooms to form two new isolation rooms, is expected to be completed later this year, and opened before December 2016.
“It’s a credit to people within the CF branch in Cavan who worked so hard on this for the last 30 years, to everyone in the county who can now see what their money and what their hard work has been able to do. It’s also a big credit to the vision of the management teams within CGH and the HSE who at all times recognised the need for these facilities from day one,” said Ms O’Neill.
Meanwhile, Niamh Meehan Bolger, who lives with CF, told the Celt: “The care we get in Cavan, from the nurses, the doctors and the care attendants, has always been out of this world. But now to have our own dedicated rooms centred here is phenomenal... We do feel safer, it’s going to make a big difference,” she said.