Waterford woman with intellectual disability to finally get eye care after 56 years

The family of a Waterford woman with intellectual disabilities, who have been fighting for her to receive the medical care necessary in relation to her false eye, have welcomed the news she is to receive help from the HSE.

However, they insist more needs to be done for people in a similar position to them.

John Devereux spoke to Waterford News & Star about the situation, which involves his sister Kitty, who is 60 years of age. In April, we highlighted Kitty’s case, which is based around her receiving the medical care necessary for the cleaning of her false eye.

Kitty’s false eye is the result of an operation she had when she was young.

Her late mother used to carry out the process of cleaning the eye, however, when she passed away the family were left in a situation whereby nobody within their family circle was skilled to carry out the process.

When they appealed to the HSE and to doctors, they found their path blocked resulting in Kitty not being able to receive the care she required, with regard to her eye. However, John revealed to Waterford News & Star that the HSE now has funding to carry out the process for them. He said one of the issues with Kitty is that her false eye was never changed, when in fact, the family learned that it should have been changed every five years.

“As she got bigger, and obviously her skull got bigger, it meant there was a vacuum building up behind her eye,” he said.

That was something that led to her eye closing all the time and there was also a build-up of mucous behind it," he added.

John said that while the family are very appreciative of the fact that Kitty will now get the help she requires that were disappointed at having to fight so hard for it to happen.

Ironically, if Kitty had been in residential care she would have received assistance and that's something the family feels needs to be changed because for them it's important that Kitty remains at home.

“She has special needs and my mother used to look after her until she passed away,” he said.

John said the family contacted the Government about the situation initially but heard nothing back and then Minister Mary Butler intervened on their behalf.

“She got on to the HSE and they got on to Primary Care and we were always under the impression that Primary Care should be looking after this for Kitty,” said John, when he first spoke to Waterford News & Star about the matter.

“They said ‘no’, it’s not them and then they said they had nobody to look after people with intellectual disabilities,” he added.

He also said the family were informed that they couldn’t get the assistance because it wasn’t a medical procedure, and that also annoyed them.

“If you do a dressing on a leg, or a cut and clean it out, well that’s a medical procedure so we felt that this was a medical procedure but Primary Care said it’s not,” he said.

"It's a big issue because there are probably a lot of other people out there in a similar position to us," he said.

"They need to have someone who is able to come out and do these checks regularly because in Kitty's case her eye has been in her head for around 56 years and has never been changed and that's not fair or good enough," he added.

A specific regime will be set up so that Kitty will be seen and have her eye tended to but as John pointed out it should never have come to this in the first place.

"This type of support should be there for people in our position, especially for people like Kitty," he said.