The AIDS virus is now being passed around among Irish people and the disease is following a pattern similar to that followed in other countries. MARK BRENNOCK reports.

In the last issue of Magill, we highlighted the case of Marie Flannery, a young woman in her early thirties who was on the waiting list for an urgent heart operation for sixteen months. We said that cutbacks were making the health service dangerous. Five days later Marie Flannery died of a heart attack. Mary Jane O'Brien reports.

Failure to tackle vested interests is turning a sick health service into a dangerous one.

This year over a billion pounds of our money will be spent on the health service, yet cutbacks are making the hospitals dangerous and public patients can't get urgent operations. One in twenty people in the Irish workforce works in the health system, yet wards full of geriatric patients are left unattended/

Fintan O'Toole, Mary Jane O'Brien and Mark Brennock find out why.

A 40 foot high, 147 acre plateau of mining waste is lying in a valley near Nenagh, Co Tipperary. When the wind rises, clouds of poisonous dust blow from the plateau onto neighbouring land causing human ilness and the death of animals. The problem is getting worse.

IT WAS COMING UP TO EIGHT O'CLOCK ON THE MORNING OF MONDAY MAY 28. AT 23 IONA ROAD, JOHN KENnedy was on the point of leaving for work, making van deliveries across the city and into the country. Shortly before he left the house he went into Niall Rush's bedroom to call him. Niall mumbled something to John, fell back to sleep. About two hours later, he was woken up by Shay O'Brien,· a friend of his who called to the house. Shay went down to boil the kettle, make some tea. Niall and Shay sat in the kitchen, had toast and tea, and discussed what they were going to do over the long weekend coming up. Shay was going to Kerry. Other people in the house were thinking about going to Donegal. Niall was undecided. He still had five days to make up his mind. The next five days he planned to spend in the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology in James Street.

OVER THE PAST' THREE months, Minister for Health Barry Desmond has given an increased allocation of £2 million to the cardiac surgery unit in Dublin's Mater Hospital. The Mater unit is the only one in the country where open-heart surgery can be performed on adult patients. It is under severe pressure, as the demand for surgery far exceeds the unit's ability to provide it. By Mary Raftery

The death has occured of Mr Bertie Kennedy of Ballyneale, Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. Mr Kennedy was 37.

 

He became ill last August, suffering from pains in the chest and breathlessness. In all, he was seen by six doctors.

 

According to his wife, all the doctors asked him where he came in contact with chemicals. Mr Kennedy did not

 

smoke and when lung cancer was diagnosed one of the doctors remarked that he had never seen this sort of

 

cancer in a farmer before. Bertie Kennedy told Magill last May that one of the doctors said that his cancer had

 

something to do with chemicals. His wife said that another doctor had asked him where he had come in contact with

 

asbestos.

Gene Kerrigan went to the Great Contraception Trial in Kildare.

A couple of gardai were smoking in court at a minute past eleven, but that didn't matter because it would be at least another five minutes before Justice Frank Johnston arrived on the bench. There's no law says the law can't take it's time. An Inspector suggested to the gardai standing near the door that they might move those TV people out of the hall. They shouldn't really be filming in there at all, you know.