A Fermanagh born GP has said that the public in this part of the country “are suffering more harm” because of “late interventions for none Covid patients” that what the virus itself has inflicted, while he has also criticised colleagues who he says have been “too keen to keep people away”.

Speaking about the “West of Northern Ireland” Dr. Brendan O’Hare has said that Covid-19 has been all but “eradicated” from the community and he expressed his fear that a “steadily building group of patients… are undiagnosed with serious illness”. Dr. O’Hare cites a public policy that has “kept patients at arm’s length” as the reason for these undiagnosed patients and has urged politicians to urgently review both the current restrictions in place and also the messaging to the public which he believes has made some reluctant to seek medical help.

Dr. O’Hare, who is originally from Enniskillen and who is Chairman of the Western Local Medical Committee has said that health care professionals must get back to doing their jobs: “I will be critical of some of my colleagues, some are too keen to keep people away and I do believe that. The clear message and guidance need to come from the centre; from the politicians, from the Department of Health, from the PHA, so those of us working in health care can do our jobs.”

“What is of most concern to me is the fact of the impact it has had on people seeking medical advice. I have personally had three patients who I have dealt with, two who were late diagnosis of cancer and the other which was the first case of gangrene I have seen in 35 years of medicine.”

In both the cancer patients Dr. O’Hare states that the individuals had come to him after failing to get the “medical help they needed” from other areas of the health service with one being “dealt with over the phone” and the other “refused treatment from both a GP and Out of Hours”. The latter case was not in this area of Northern Ireland.

Speaking about the man who presented with gangrene Dr O’Hare stated: “This man was so afraid to come and so afraid to go to the hospital that he stayed out until this infection became unmanageable and in the end he needed the finger amputated.”

And the Castlederg based doctor queried what the true reflection is across the country.

“If me, as one GP, has seen two late diagnoses of cancer and one amputation because of gangrene, what are other doctors seeing across Northern Ireland seeing and what is the true scale of this.”

Figures from the Norther Ireland Statistical Research Agency for the seven week period up to May 15 have shown that there was 867 “excess deaths” compared with the average deaths over the same seven week period over the past five years. In that same seven weeks there have been 642 deaths attributed to Covid-19 leaving an excess of 225 deaths from other causes.

Dr. OHare believes that things may get worse in terms of serious illness and death from non Covid-19 related conditions: “In this part of the country we are seeing more harm from late medical interventions for none Covid patients than we are from Covid patients. We need to refocus, we need to get back to doing our job. We will have to think our way through it. There is a steadily building group of patients out there who are undiagnosed with serious illness and we need to treat that need. We need to be able to do our job and our politicians and our public health people need to take this into account when they are giving out advice to the public.”

Dr. O’Hare says that the approach adopted at the start of the pandemic in terms of restrictions was the right course of action to take but he believes that they are not right for what is happening in the community now: “The level of caution that was instilled in the health care professionals and the public was required six weeks ago but we are through that and we are suffering more harm now because we are continuing in that mindset. We need to meet the need that has been built up. The public need to be given more credit. The public embraced the restrictions. In fact I think in this part of the world the public put restrictions on themselves before the government did. But now I think we need to see a swifter lifting of some of those restrictions. We have a more draconian lockdown in place than England, which has a significantly higher rate of infection.”

Dr. O’Hare concluded by saying that patients deserve better care than they are getting at present:

“I can tell you something, as a GP. The way we are currently working which is a sort of feeling of keeping people at arm’s length, is not the sort of medicine that I want to practice. It needs to be reviewed and we need to re-engage with our patients to give them the health care that they deserve.”