Recommendation IHRD-85: Deputy CMO for Children's Healthcare
From Report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths, published 31 January 2018.
Recommendation
The Department should appoint a Deputy Chief Medical Officer with specific responsibility for children's healthcare.
In brief (written by this site)
The Inquiry recommended appointing a Deputy Chief Medical Officer for children's healthcare. In June 2023, the Department of Health (Northern Ireland) listed this recommendation under a table heading of Phase 1 recommendations that were "ACTIONED" (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Jun 2023). In that June 2023 document, the department did not describe an appointment, and appointing a Deputy Chief Medical Officer is not mentioned in the sources (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Jun 2023). It did not state in June 2023 whether any work on the recommendation remained outstanding (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Jun 2023).
Sources
AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 1 Oct 2026. The record below is the sources' own words.
Government response
My Department accepts the recommendations of the O'Hara Report in their entirety.
Blanket government agreement does not establish acceptance or delivery by each addressee. Some response passages cover groups of recommendations.
Scope of the government response
The Minister of Health accepted all 96 recommendations together, in one sentence of a written statement to the Northern Ireland Assembly on 25 March 2021. That sentence is not a response to any one recommendation alone, and the Department of Health published no response to each recommendation. The Department's statements of 31 January, 2 February and 30 March 2018 contain no acceptance of the recommendations.
Delivery
Department of Health (Northern Ireland) says completed (19 June 2023)
IHRD Phase 1 Recommendations – ACTIONED
From: IHRD Recommendations Phase 1 & Phase 2 (Updated June 2023)
Site note: These words are from the Department of Health's document linked on this page. The Department's website asks automated tools not to fetch its document files directly, so the site cites the page that links the document.
Site note: This is the heading of a table in the Department of Health's June 2023 list of the recommendations. It covers all 66 actions in that table together. It is the Department's table heading, not a statement about this recommendation alone. In October 2022 the Department also said that "full implementation of the 96 recommendations is by no means complete", which refers to the programme as a whole.
Source
Responsible bodies
Themes and tags
Who has spoken
- Department of Health NI
Response - Department of Health (Northern Ireland)
Delivery statement