An eight year old boy, whose parents went public with his suffering as he continues to wait for years for surgery for life-threatening scoliosis, has been removed from the surgery wait list without his family being informed.
Harvey Sherratt’s parents Gillian Sherratt and Stephen Morrison shared a video of their little boy struggling to breathe as spinal curve continued to twist his ribcage around his lungs and pushed down on his heart.
The video shared by Harvey’s desperate parents attracted national attention and led to a public outcry. Hundreds of children have been waiting for years for essential scoliosis and spina bifida treatment, despite political promises, including one from now Taoiseach, Simon Harris that the situation would be resolved.
https://twitter.com/GillSherratt23/status/1834943358734639150Gillian Sherratt says now that “while we have been campaigning, while we have all been sharing his story, while we have been watching footage of Harvey struggling to breathe, while we have been watching him screaming in pain, CHI Ireland took it upon themselves to remove Harvey from the waiting list. “
“Harvey was on the list since February 2022 and had been waiting over two years, and he was removed without our consent, or even us being informed,” she said.
“The only reason we even know is because I queried his status again. Where else in the world would you see a child with a curvature well over 100° actually taken *off* a surgical list,” she asked.
“Spending years sitting on that list is bad enough but to go ahead and actually remove that little glimmer of hope we had is just inexcusable,” the little boy’s mother wrote.
“They had no plan in place for Harvey, no scheduled follow up appointments, just him kicked off the list without even a courtesy call to let us know. As far as I can tell they gave zero consideration to his wellbeing in making that decision,” she wrote on X.
“We have been spending so much time trying to decide if we should put this out publicly but you have all been so supportive of us, and all the children waiting so far and it just felt too important to not share. Your support helps us fight for better, because we all know these children, and the children that will come after them deserve better,” she added.
She also accused Children’s Health Ireland and an Taoiseach Simon Harris of engaging in “spin” while children suffered.
From our own experience, this new task force is nothing but a media spin between CHI and Simon Harris to make it seem like they’re making things better but this is the reality, Ms Sherratt wrote.
“Not only have things not got better for most of us, in some cases they’ve somehow got worse. They say that they’re improving communications with parents but I have asked David Moore (the lead of the task force) repeatedly for information like when Harvey was removed from the list and he is actively evading answering,” she said.
“Don’t let the media spin fool you, these children are continuing to be failed and CHI and this government are not only allowing it, they’re causing it.”
Ms Sherratt told reporters that she and her husband “feel quite broken and defeated by it all”.
“In terms of where we go from here and how we move forward, it’s very hard to say, until we get the answers to all the questions I’ve had.”
“If I hadn’t emailed CHI, how long would we have gone without knowing that Harvey had been removed from that list,” she said.
She urged other parents of children who believed they were still on the urgent scoliosis surgery list to check, saying: “I am just hoping now that if other parents haven’t heard from the hospital in a while, that they will take this as their opportunity to contact the hospital and verify their own child’s status.”
“I would hate to think that there’s other parents of other kids out there waiting to hear something, and they may be completely unaware that their child might have also been removed from that list without a word.”
Ms Sherratt said that when she had written seeking a surgery plan from CHI for her son, she was then told Harvey was no longer on the list “as per the Consultant’s clinical input from his previous appointments”.
She then wrote to CHI saying she found it “incredibly concerning that Harvey was removed from the active list without our consent or even us being formed of such” and she asked, “had I not raised the question, when would I have been informed?”
The difficulties facing children with scoliosis has been exacerbated by the decision by the CHI to put Mr Connor Green, a consultant paediatric orthopaedic surgeon treating children with the condition, on leave after they referred him to the Medical Council regarding concerns that were raised about springs being used that were not approved for medical use.
CHI has been asked for comment today.
Previously, Ms Sherratt had written: “there are so many families like us, children like Harvey suffering on a daily basis because their basic right to medical care isn’t being met.”
“We have children struggling to breathe from the pressure their lungs are under, children unable to just go to school, becoming paralysed, children in immense pain, children losing the ability to walk, children becoming inoperable and unfortunately also children dying, all while waiting for a date for surgery. Even being forced to wait to get any communication at all from the hospitals. Each and every one of these children deserve to get treated. Each and every one of these children deserve to live pain free.”
“Each and every one of these children deserve a happy childhood. They do not deserve the agony and anguish that is being forced upon them by the state”
https://twitter.com/GillSherratt23/status/1754150580228948479