BY DANIELLE RIES and JESSICA ROUSE
Swansea MP Yasmin Catley is calling on the Berejiklian government to provide more ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialists for families in the Hunter.
It comes after a Belmont family was forced to pay $4,000 to see an ENT specialist due to a lack of appointments available to the public in the region.
“It is just staggering to think that we are not providing services to our children in our region. At the same time, we’ve got a government that is constantly gloating about the rivers of gold they have received through privatising everything that’s not nailed down. Yet we cannot provide health services to children in our area,” said Yasmin Catley.
The Member for Swansea has written to the Minister for Health, calling on him to urgently expand services across the Hunter and to clarify exactly how many children are currently waiting for ENT services throughout the Hunter New England health district.
“This government has got its priorities all wrong. It needs to start to make sure that it is looking after the people of NSW. It is appealing to think that here we have a child who has a result of not being able to get into a specialist service for in excess of a year and almost become profoundly deaf and therefore experienced terrible developmental delays.”
