H-Block Heart Attack
A young Belfast member of the republican movement, Paddy
Loughran, has suffered a heart attack as a result of the terrible
conditions prevailing now in the H-Blocks of the Long Kesh
Concentration Camp and has been transferred to hospital.
One of the factors which aggravated the heart attack was the
savage beatings of the younger prisoners, in the 18-25 age group.
Paddy has been nine months on the blanket.
Last week a gang of fifty screws entered prisoners' cells,
dismantled bunks and removed steel frames, leaving the prisoners
with only their mattresses on the filthy concrete floor.
It is believed in Belfast that many of the 299 H-Block prisoners
are seriously ill and that some of them have accompanied Paddy to
hospital wards.
But there are still seriously ill men who need hospital treatment
for such complaints as ulcers but who are not getting any more
useful treatment than tablets.
Relatives of prisoners who visited our Dublin office last week
asked us to tell readers of a very simple but effective way to
help the valiant prisoners of war: ``Send telegrams or letters or
even post-cards to Amnesty, to the Red Cross in Geneva, to the
Human Rights Commission in Strasbourg, to the United Nations
Organisation and suchlike bodies, as well as to leaders of public
opinion at home and abroad.''
Phoblacht 9 May 1978
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)