Ulster Unionist Councillor Victor Warrington has expressed his anger after it was revealed that post-mortems on young children will no longer be carried out in Northern Ireland due to a shortage of key staff.
As a result, remains of babies and young children will have to be sent to a hospital in England for post-mortems, increasing the grief faced by parents and likely delaying subsequent funeral services.
Victor Warrington said:
“This is a ridiculous state of affairs. It is outrageous that the situation has been allowed to even get anywhere near this stage.
“Parents who lose a baby or young child will already be going through a nightmare and now from early next year if they want to find out what caused their little ones death they face the agonising choice between sending their child to England for a post-mortem, and all the inevitable delays that will go with that, or taking their baby home and possibly never knowing what really happened.
“This is just another example of the crisis engulfing the Northern Ireland health service. The fact that parents are now being directly hit with the cruel and cold-hearted consequences of a complete failure of workforce planning however is shameful.
"Public services across Northern Ireland have been leaderless for almost two years now and are drifting ever closer to a cliff edge. We urgently need local Ministers appointed to begin to take decisions, or failing that, the Secretary of State should move immediately to lay out her plans for Direct Rule.”
