SINN Fein councillor Patricia Logue has said that only a full public inquiry will establish the facts regarding the dangers posed by the use of surgical mesh implants.
The local Health spokesperson was commenting following the publication of a new audit which found that most surgeons failed to comply with guidelines on how many vaginal mesh operations they should perform each year.
She also strongly criticised the limited extent of the audit which only looked at 340 patients who had the procedure in 2013.
“The recommendations emerging as a result of the restricted Ashe Audit are shameful in themselves because they suggest a litany of poor care, practitioners without appropriate training, a lack of appropriate post-operative care, poor data collection and no long term monitoring of outcomes,” Patricia Logue said.
“Worse still, despite a recent report by the European Committee on Emerging Health risks which found data collection on mesh surgery outcomes was so poor that informed consent was not possible, the recommendations are still characterising the problem as the need for a ‘one to one’ discussion.
“We feared the Ashe Audit was commissioned primarily as a distraction to undermine the call for a public inquiry and these fears have not been dispelled by its publication.”
