She is the whistleblower who called for help for nursing home residents, but help came too late.
"I am begging the HSE to go into the home and try save the residents and nurse them better."
This was the last line of an email Sadie Allen wrote to the HSE and HIQA on 2 February 2021, detailing multiple ongoing breaches of infection prevention and controls protocols at a Cork nursing home during the third wave of Covid, amid an outbreak of the virus.
By the end of the outbreak, which lasted over one month, 24 residents, nearly half of those residing at the 51-bed facility, had died.
At the time she wrote that email the outbreak at CareChoice Ballynoe in White's Cross, Co Cork had led to practically all staff and residents testing positive at the nursing home - 47 staff and 46 residents.
Sadie hoped the HSE or HIQA would intervene and go to the nursing home to investigate her detailed complaint. Instead, the HSE’s response was that her concerns were being brought to the attention of the nursing home’s management.
Now, new information obtained under Freedom of Information, and shared with Prime Time, has shed new light on the health service’s response to the outbreak at Ballynoe around the time that Sadie raised the alarm over January and February 2021.
The internal HSE emails and minutes of meetings reveal that despite HSE plans to take action to visit Ballynoe during its outbreak in late January, this never happened.
Under public health guidance at the time, while the primary...
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