The Chief Executive of the Western Trust has told the Stormont Health committee that he believes social deprivation is why some people are missing appointments.

Neil Guckian and the Chief Executives of all of Northern Ireland’s health trusts were giving evidence to the committee last Thursday, November 21.

Mr. Guckian told the committee that he initially thought the absence was down to people having to travel for appointments.

He said Do Not Attends (DNAs) continue to be an issue for the health service.

“We’ve done audits, and we’ve phoned patients to find out the underlying causes because we are asking patients to travel further so we wanted to make sure was that the reason.

“People have told us that is not the reason why they’re not turning up,” said Mr. Guckian who added that patients are but we phone them three days before their operations to ask them if they are definitely coming for their operation and still people were not coming.

“I believe it’s linked to social deprivation. In other words, people do not want to admit that they can’t take days off work and they’re forgoing their operations at the expense of maintaining their livelihood.

“And I think that’s a sad indictment of our society so we have to try and have wraparound support to that.”