Campaign pushes for medical cards for 9,000 children with disabilities
By Laura Lyne
A LOCAL campaign for medical cards for sick children is set to team up with the Jack & Jill Children’s Foundation and Down Syndrome Ireland to urge the government to grant children in receipt of Domiciliary Care Allowance a medical card.
Our Children’s Health, which was created by Kilnamanagh native and Clondalkin resident Kevin Shortall, along with his brother-in-law Peter Fitzpatrick, has been campaigning for medical cards for sick children for over 520 days.
This week the group, along with Jack & Jill and Down Syndrome Ireland, will send a joint letter to all members of the Oireachtas, urging them to make this change.
Kevin Shortall and Mark Fitzpatrick from Our Children’s Health told The Echo: “It is hard to fathom that Government is now planning to extend free GP care to all children under 12 when the State still cannot guarantee medical cards for children with the most profound disabilities, life-limiting and life-long conditions.
“For these children, there is no automatic entitlement, and for their parents, no certainty.
“We have no objection to the concept of free GP care – all we are seeking is that the state would guarantee free medical care to children with serious medical needs, first.
“The GP card is of little use to these children. The vast majority have complex care needs and are treated almost exclusively in hospital and rehabilitation settings, with most having little or no interaction with their GP.
“We have the numbers – 26,000 children in receipt of Domiciliary Care Allowance – that is 26,000 children already deemed by this State to have a disability so severe that the child requires care and attention substantially in excess of another child of the same age.
“It is clear that all children in this cohort have some level of medical need, from profound to moderate, and that 9,000 of these children that meet the criteria for the DCA do not have medical cards.”
Over 65,000 people have already signed the petition to ask the government to grant medical cards to all those children with a serious illness or a congenital condition.
For more information on Our Children’s Health, visit www.ourchildrenshealth.ie
