Health Service Executive chief executive Paul Reid thanked Dr Ankur Sharma last month “for having had the professional integrity and strength of character to persist with your concerns and to insist that they be addressed”. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
The whistleblower in the South Kerry Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (Camhs) controversy says he plans to leave Ireland reluctantly after being sidelined and ostracised in the health service here.
Dr Ankur Sharma, whose concerns about overmedication and misdiagnosis of children were vindicated in an official report, says he is being treated “as if I’m non-existent”.
The Indian-born consultant psychiatrist says he would prefer to continue working in Ireland “to complete the task I started” but adds that “no one will talk to me”.
Dr Sharma has said the issues identified in South Kerry are not confined to that area and that there were serious problems in several other Camhs units in which he worked as a locum.
“I believe everything will go back to the way it was before, until the next disaster unfolds,” he told The Irish Times.
He was due to take up a new locum post in Co Monaghan this week but says this was cancelled “at the last minute” after his agency was told the Health Service Executive had “potentially” found someone to take up a permanent position.
His previous posting in Co Clare ended early, he says, when he was put on...
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