THE OMBUDSMAN FOR Children Emily Logan has ordered the HSE to pay costs for a nine-year-old child to travel abroad for a limb-lengthening operation.
The Office of the Ombudsman for Children found that the child’s family had been wrongly told they owed €5,000 for accommodation that was not covered by the executive’s scheme for treatment abroad.
The boy requires extensive surgeries to lengthen his limbs, having been born without a right femur or hip or a left arm.
The family researched a number of international healthcare providers, eventually settling to spend four months in Baltimore in the US. Their health insurer covers the operations, of which there will be several over the coming years.
In 2009, the family were told that they would receive travel and subsistence costs from the HSE, though this would be on a discretionary basis. However, in 2011 this was stopped.
The HSE argued that as the treatment was now being provided in the UK, it would not be paying for travel to the US. The family want to stay with the same specialist that they have been working with since 2007.
The Ombudsman’s report says that removing the costs would stop the boy’s treatment, something the family argues would be “life-limiting”.
The boy told the Ombudsman’s office that without the treatment, “I will be in a wheelchair until I am dead.”
Logan recommended that the HSE honour their agreement to fund the travel or make an alternative arrangement.
She added that although the executive has since changed their policy, the original assurances had been made in writing two years before these changes.
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