A 12-year-old boy's life was put at risk in Cavan General Hospital this week. At 2 p.m. on Monday, a 12-year-old boy, Aaron, was admitted to Cavan General Hospital in extreme pain. An ultrasound was carried out and appendicitis was diagnosed. His parents were told he would be kept overnight, keyhole surgery would be performed the next morning and he would be home in a few hours.

On Monday night-Tuesday morning, at approximately 3 a.m., he was in extreme pain and the nurse repeatedly called for a doctor to come to see him and examine him. No doctor came. He was left there. He was prepped for operation on Tuesday from, say, 10 a.m. on. He had been fasting all this time and had no food or water. He was not brought to theatre until 10.20 p.m. He was supposed to go in first thing in the morning but this was at 10.20 p.m., so he was the whole day without food, without water and in pain. Other children on the ward were getting good and he was left; he could not eat. His mouth was all dry and sore because he could not drink. His parents were told that the operation went well.

At 4.30 p.m. yesterday, he could not breathe. His eyes were rolling in his head and he actually said to his mother, "I think I am going to die." Thankfully, they are very friendly with some of the organisers of the North-East Sepsis Awareness, NESA, campaign, and all the symptoms indicated he had sepsis. He is being treated now for sepsis and has responded well, thankfully, to that treatment.

The issue is clearly that the standard of care was atrocious. The calls by the nurse for a doctor to come to see him in the middle of the night were ignored. He was left for 27 hours without food and water, and now has sepsis. Hopefully, he will recover from sepsis. If sepsis gets into your body, it does not leave and can reoccur at any time. It is the biggest killer in the world, but for those who survive sepsis, it can have serious consequences. I know people who have lost limbs as a result of it. Senator McCarthy gave a very good briefing in the audiovisual room on this last week and I have raised the issue here previously.

All of those issues are very serious. I commend NESA on the work it is doing on creating awareness of this. We need to see our health professionals recognising the symptoms and responding immediately, but there is no excuse for what this child went through in Cavan General Hospital. We go in there expecting a standard of care. I presume most people get it, but I am very concerned now that any child would be left like this. A child, in particular, should get priority. I want this highlighted with the Minister for Health so that we can get a response on what happened in Cavan General Hospital this week.