Butcher Doc Still Gets Pension

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Butcher Doc Still Gets Pension

September 3, 2008

By Paddy Clancy

THERE has been furious reaction to the revelation that disgraced obstetrician Dr. Michael Neary has collected more than $900,000 since his enforced early retirement nine years ago.

Details of his pension of more than $100,000 a year which he continues to collect although struck off the Medical Register emerged in a two-part RTE television drama documentary on his bungling as an obstetrician at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

Neary was struck off when an inquiry found that during his 25-year tenure at the hospital he unnecessarily removed the wombs of 122 women. It later emerged that he also needlessly removed women’s ovaries.

The RTE program Whistleblower was based on details of how a young midwife helped expose the medic who was called The Butcher of Drogheda in one newspaper earlier this week.

The concerns of the midwife, who was new to the hospital at the time, centered on the growing number of caesarean hysterectomies. After finding it initially difficult to get anybody to take her seriously, she was eventually believed by a health board administrator and a detailed investigation was launched.

Now, following the program, there have been renewed calls for the inclusion of an additional 35 women in a redress scheme set up to compensate Neary’s victims.

The scheme, which is drawing to a close, does not cover women who were over 40 years of age when he was found guilty of professional misconduct and struck off in 2003.

Among those who have qualified for compensation, a number won’t even get as much as Neary’s yearly pension.

Mother-of-two Marie Reaburn from Ardee, Co. Louth, was operated on by Neary 16 years ago, three days after her 40th birthday. He said he had to remove her womb as she had a large fibroid. She agreed to the operation as long as he didn’t remove her ovaries as well.

A day after the surgery he told her he had to remove her ovaries too, bringing on an early menopause, as she had endometriosis. She was devastated.

Only in July last year, when her medical notes were reviewed by an independent obstetrician, did she learn the removal of her ovaries had been unnecessary as she did not have endometriosis. She said the Dublin-based independent obstetrician also told her that her womb could have been saved.

Reaburn appealed to Health Minister Mary Harney to include women like her, whose lives had been “turned upside down” in the redress scheme.

Sheila O’Connor of the lobby group Patient Focus said Neary, who is now living out his retirement in Co. Louth, had never indicated he had any insight into what he did or shown any sympathy for his damaged patients.

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