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Sam

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  1. Sam
    A surgeon has been suspended on the same day a hospital review concluded harm had been caused in hundreds of cases.
    A tribunal ruled that Tony Dixon, who used artificial mesh to treat prolapsed bowels at Southmead Hospital, in Bristol, and the Spire Hospital, still posed a risk.
    The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service's hearing concluded on Thursday that a six-month suspension was "appropriate".
    Spire Healthcare has now released its review of Mr Dixon, and found 259 cases where harm had been caused. Health bosses have "apologised sincerely".
    The majority of harm was in three main areas: the failure to adequately investigate patients prior to offering the procedure; the failure to adequately offer alternative treatments; and poor consent with risks and benefits of the procedure not adequately discussed.
    The tribunal found Mr Dixon’s fitness to practise is impaired and his suspension would allow him time to "to develop further insight and remediate his misconduct".
    The General Medical Council brought the case against Mr Dixon, who denies all the allegations and maintains that the procedures were carried out in good faith.
    His suspension will start immediately.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 18 July 2024
  2. Sam
    NHS England has tasked systems and providers with ending or significantly reducing 104-week waits for community mental health services by March 2025, following worsening performance.
    It was announced in a webinar held by NHSE last week, in which mental health programme directors explained how the new metric would be implemented this autumn.
    They confirmed that when an integrated care board or provider has a “small number” of 104-week waits, they should work to end them by March, and provide “trajectories” for 78-week and 52-week waits.
    For those with a “larger number” of long waits, NHSE said ICBs should work with providers to agree an improvement plan throughout the rest of 2024-25. It said they would need to “detail ICB and provider-level trajectories” and submit these soon.
    It said: “At a minimum, ICBs should ensure that less than 10 per cent of community mental health waits are over 104 weeks.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 18 July 2024
  3. Sam
    Thousands of children’s lives are being blighted by shocking delays to NHS care of up to three years, according to a report that warns a “forgotten generation” will suffer long-term harm as a result.
    The health service is struggling to cope with rapidly rising demand for increasingly complex and acute care needs among children and young people, the research by NHS Providers shows.
    Health leaders say the crisis in England is so severe that there is now “deep concern” that lifelong, permanent harm is being caused by crippling delays to NHS care. Long waits for basic healthcare are derailing children’s development, educational attainment and mental health, they revealed.
    One trust reported that waiting times for children’s autism assessments had risen from about 14 months before the Covid-19 pandemic to 38 months today. Children are also being forced to wait too long for essential speech and language therapy, hearing tests, medical treatment and surgery.
    “Too many young lives are being blighted by delays to accessing vital NHS care,” said Sir Julian Hartley, the chief executive of NHS Providers. “We’re in danger of seeing a forgotten generation of young people.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 15 July 2024
  4. Sam
    The waiting lists for diagnostic tests, including cancer scans, is at a record high in NHS England, with doctors warning of a “staggering shortfall” of clinical radiologists.
    Figures published on Thursday reveal the diagnostic waiting list stands at 1,658,221 – twice what it was 10 years ago. Nearly 500,000 patients are waiting for CT scans and MRIs.
    The figures show the scale of the task facing the new health secretary, Wes Streeting, who has ordered a review into the NHS. Labour pledged in its manifesto to double the number of scanners, but doctors warn there is an urgent need for more staff to operate them and read the resulting scans.
    “The NHS is broken,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said in response to the figures. “Waiting lists are too high and patients have not been able to access the care they desperately need.
    “The longer patients wait for tests and scans, the worse their outcomes will be. We’ve got to get patients diagnosed much earlier.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 14 July 2024
  5. Sam
    An integrated care board has named Oracle Health as the “likely” supplier of an electronic patient record that will be the first to be used across acute, mental and health services.
    Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board is planning to procure a single electronic patient record for both its sole acute, Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust and mental health and community service provider Essex Partnership University Trust. 
    Details of the move were revealed in the integrated care system’s “joint forward plan” for 2024-2029 which was presented to the ICB’s July board.
    Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust – which was formed by a merger of three trusts – currently uses seven different EPRs, while Essex Partnership University Trust has three. The new unified EPR is expected to go live in 2026-2027.
    NHS England has encouraged ICSs to “converge” their EPR system for over two years. A number of acute trusts operating within the same system have already launched plans to share the same EPR. This includes Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire and Norfolk and Waveney.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 12 July 2024
    Related reading on the hub:
    EPR systems and concerns about patient safety NHS England warns electronic patient record could pose ‘serious risks to patient safety’: what can we learn? The foundations for a safe digital service delivery in health—A blog by Rob Ludman
  6. Sam
    Gastrointestinal procedures that generate high levels of smoke pose significant health risks to operating room personnel.
    This is according to a recent study that suggests endoscopic smoke has the toxic equivalent of one cigarette per procedure over the course of a career.
    Trent Walradt, a research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and lead author of the study, explained: "Surgeons in the operating room have regulations and guidelines to mitigate smoke exposure, but that does not exist for gastrointestinal endoscopy. When you’re using cautery, it generates a smoke plume. We wanted to know whether the smoke produced during some of our endoscopic procedures is dangerous."
    The results were presented at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2024 in Washington, US.
    Staff at risk included those attending certain smoke-producing endoscopic gastrointestinal procedures, including a procedure that uses electrical current to remove polyps.
    Chris Thompson, director of endoscopy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and principal investigator, said: "Over the course of a career, endoscopic smoke may pose significant health risks to personnel in the endoscopy suite. If you're doing four or five procedures a day, that’s five cigarettes a day. Over the course of a week, it’s like you're smoking a pack of cigarettes. That's not acceptable."
    He added: "We’re in the early phases of this, but I think our findings are very important and, quite frankly, a little concerning and surprising."
    Read full story
    Source: Surgery, 25 June 2024
  7. Sam
    NHS patients are being left unseen in pain and in some cases to die alone because shifts do not have enough registered nurses, a survey shows.
    The Royal College of Nursing said analysis of a survey it carried out showed that only a third of shifts had enough registered nurses on duty.
    The union has also gathered testimonies from nurses who talk of always “rushing” and being asked to do more; working in “completely unsafe” levels of care; and having to make “heartbreaking” decisions on who does or doesn’t get seen.
    Shortages mean individual nurses are often caring for dozens of patients at a time, the RCN said. It has called for limits on the maximum number of patients for whom a single nurse can be responsible.
    Nicola Ranger, the RCN’s acting general secretary and chief executive, said the survey showed that patients were being failed.
    “In every health and care setting, nursing staff are fighting a losing battle to keep patients safe,” she said. “Without safety-critical limits on the maximum number of patients they can care for, nurses are being made responsible for dozens at a time, often with complex needs.
    “It is dangerous to patients and demoralising for nursing staff.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 1 July 2024
  8. Sam
    'PAs' -  who have just two years training - are being used to treat NHS patients, but doctors are concerned about patient safety, reports Sarah Graham.
    PAs, or physician associates, are a relatively new type of health professional, first introduced in the UK in 2003 and increasingly used across the NHS to provide care to patients, including at GP surgeries. They undergo two years of postgraduate training (compared with the ten years of medical training needed to become a GP).
    There are now more than 3,000 PAs working in the NHS. The Government has said it wants to increase the number to 10,000 by 2037, but the scheme has become controversial following a series of reports of patients being misdiagnosed, some with fatal consequences.
    As far as Dave Hay knew, he was seeing a GP. It was 2022 and he’d started having bouts of dizziness, brain fog and fatigue. “It was having an impact on my work and everyday life, so I called my local surgery to make an appointment. I saw someone who wasn’t my usual doctor, but she introduced herself as Dr Smith,” says Hay, 57, a scientist from Yorkshire. “I explained my symptoms. She didn’t do any kind of examination – didn’t check my ears or my vision – and just said, ‘look, I don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong with you, but come back if your symptoms get worse’,” he says.
    Two weeks later Dave, now 57, a scientist from Yorkshire, felt worse. 
    It was only later, during a chance conversation with the practice nurse, that Dave learned he hadn’t been seeing a GP at all. “I was at a routine appointment and explained what had happened,” Dave says. “The nurse asked who I’d seen and said, ‘that’s not a doctor, that’s a PA’. I had no idea what a PA was.” 
    When Dave arranged an appointment with one of the named GPs, she diagnosed depression and anxiety, because of issues at work and a recent family bereavement. “She looked at my medical history and asked some much more targeted questions, pieced it all together, and recommended talking therapy and antidepressants,” Dave explains, who is now well.
    However, he does feel that he was misled and waited longer for the right treatment because the PA did not explain her actual role, which they are supposed to do. 
    Read full story
    Source: iNews, 1 Jul7 2024
  9. Sam
    The family of a student who died after hospital staff missed that she had developed sepsis despite a string of warning signs have claimed she was the victim of a “lack of care”, as a coroner ruled there were “gross” failures in her treatment.
    Staff at Southmead hospital in Bristol failed to carry out the sepsis screening and observations needed to keep 20-year-old Maddy Lawrence safe after she was taken to hospital with a dislocated hip sustained in a rugby tackle.
    Outside court, the student’s mother, Karen Lawrence, said: “It has been a constant struggle to understand how a healthy, strong and fit 20-year-old could lose her life to sepsis which was allowed to develop under the care of professionals.
    “Her screams of pain and our pleas for help were merely managed, temporarily quietened with painkillers while the infection progressed unnoticed by hospital staff.
    “Our daughter was failed by a number of nurses and medical staff; symptoms were ignored, observations were not taken, on one occasion for 16 hours. There was no curiosity, basic tests were not completed even when hospital policy required them.
    “Maddy herself expressed concern on multiple occasions but her pain was not being taken seriously. As well as failing to fulfil their duty, those nurses and medical staff offered no sympathy, no compassion and little attention.
    “This failure meant Maddy was not given the chance to beat sepsis. Significant delays in its discovery meant the crucial window for treatment was missed. Maddy did not die due to under-staffing or a lack of money. Her death was the result of a lack of care.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 8 September 2023
  10. Sam
    A 33-year-old New Zealand woman who was accused of faking debilitating symptoms has died of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS).
    Stephanie Aston became an advocate for patients' rights after doctors refused to take her EDS symptoms seriously and blamed them on mental illness. She was just 25 when those symptoms began in October 2015. At the time, she did not know she had inherited the health condition.
    EDS refers to a group of inherited disorders caused by gene mutations that weaken the connective tissues. There are at least 13 different types of EDS, and the conditions range from mild to life-threatening. EDS is extremely rare.
    Aston sought medical help after her symptoms—which included severe migraines, abdominal pain, joint dislocations, easy bruising, iron deficiency, fainting, tachycardia, and multiple injuries—began in 2015, per the New Zealand Herald. She was referred to Auckland Hospital, where a doctor accused her of causing her own illness.
    Because of his accusations, Aston was placed on psychiatric watch. She had to undergo rectal examinations and was accused of practising self-harming behaviours. She was suspected of faking fainting spells, fevers, and coughing fits, and there were also suggestions that her mother was physically harming her.
    There was no basis for the doctor’s accusations that her illness was caused by psychiatric issues, Aston told the New Zealand Herald. “There was no evaluation prior to this, no psych consultation, nothing,” she said.
    She eventually complained to the Auckland District Health Board and the Health and Disability Commissioner of New Zealand. “I feel like I have had my dignity stripped and my rights seriously breached,” she said.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 6 September 2023
  11. Sam
    Three in four NHS staff have struggled with a mental health condition in the last year, according to a new poll.
    A survey of workers carried out by NHS Charities Together over medics’ mental health comes as healthcare leaders were forced to reverse cuts to NHS Practitioner Health, a service for medics.
    A backlash from NHS staff over the proposed cuts forced health secretary Victoria Atkins to intervene.
    In the new poll of more than 1,000 NHS staff, 76% said they have experienced a health condition in the last year with 52% reporting anxiety, 51% reporting low mood, while 42% of respondents also said they’d experienced exhaustion.
    Meanwhile, the most recent NHS data shows the most common reasons for staff sickness are anxiety, stress, depression or other psychiatric conditions, with more than 586,600 working days lost over this in November 2023.
    NHS Practitioner Health began as a mental health service for GPs but has since expanded to other specialities following funding from NHS England. However, last week the provider announced this national funding was due to end, so its service would be reduced.
    NHS England said the decision was so it could review the services available for all NHS staff. However, it was forced to u-turn on the decision and agreed to provide funding for an additional year.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 17 April 2024
  12. Sam
    A regulator overseeing 340,000 professionals breached a psychologist’s human rights by letting their fitness-to-practise case go on for a decade, amid widespread very long delays, it has emerged.
    A judgment from the Health and Care Professions Tribunal said the “lamentable” situation for the registrant was down to the “disgraceful… manner in which the Healthcare Professions Council dealt with their case”.
    The HCPC oversees professional standards for several groups including radiographers, paramedics, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and operating department practitioners.
    If a complaint is made about a registrant, it can investigate and refer them to the tribunal, which can strike them off.
    The Society of Radiographers said the current speed of cases was “simply unacceptable” and its director of industrial strategy Dean Rogers added: “Our members spend too long working — and living — under the intense scrutiny of their regulator, often under the control of an interim order restricting or even preventing their practise while investigations drag on.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 17 April 2024
  13. Sam
    In the next few days, once the data has been collected, the Government will come out and say that, thanks to its policies, the situation in A&E is improving.
    Despite estimates released recently by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine that soaring waits for A&E beds led to more than 250 needless deaths a week in England alone last year, the Government will point to declining numbers of patients who breached the four-hour target this March.
    The four-hour target means we're meant to see and either discharge or admit patients within four hours of their arriving in A&E.
    But it's a sham, writes Professor Rob Galloway in the Daily Mail. Because, for the past month, the four-hour data has been manipulated, the result of two policies introduced earlier in the month by the Government.
    Read full story
    Source: Daily Mail, 3 April 2024
  14. Sam
    A gran was left lying outside in the cold facing a seven hour wait for an ambulance following a fall before finally being rescued — by firefighters. Betsy Hulme, 83, was left in agony with a broken hip when she tumbled in her back garden in Leek, Staffordshire.
    Son Steve, 60, a former ambulance technician, dialled 999 only to be told it would be several hours until paramedics could get to them due to long handover delays. After a further three hours of Betsy waiting on cold concrete slabs while soaked in rain water, desperate Steve decided to drive to a nearby fire station to ask for help.
    Fire crews then came to rescue to lift gran-of-four Betsy into her son's car who took her to hospital where she remains after undergoing a hip repair operation. Dad-of-two Steve, of Leek, has now branded emergency response times as “absolutely disgusting”.
    He said: "It’s opened my eyes if I’m honest. It’s absolutely disgusting. I’m so grateful and thankful to the fire service - but it really isn’t their job. I can't remember in my time working as an ambulance technician going to someone and saying, 'I’m sorry it’s taken us twelve hours to get here'."
    “It was never anywhere near those ridiculous times when I worked there until 2000 and something has gone drastically wrong since. I can't speak highly enough of the boys and girls who work in the NHS, it's the people above them. Its systemic change that's needed."
    Read full story
    Source: Wales Online, 4 April 2024
  15. Sam
    Black children in the UK are at four times greater risk of complications following emergency appendicitis surgery compared with white children.
    Researchers revealed these alarming disparities in postoperative outcomes recently.
    The study, led by Dr Amaki Sogbodjor, a consultant anaesthetist at Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College London, showed that black children faced these greater risks irrespective of their socioeconomic status and health history.
    Appendicitis is one of the most prevalent paediatric surgical emergencies; approximately 10,000 cases are treated annually in the UK.
    However, this marks the first attempt to scrutinise demographic variances in postoperative complication rates related to appendicitis.
    Dr Sogbodjor emphasised the critical need for further investigation into the root causes of these disparities.
    "This apparent health inequality requires urgent further investigation and development of interventions aimed at resolution," she said.
    Read full story
    Source: Surgery, 25 March 2024
  16. Sam
    The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has called on the UK government not to wait until after the upcoming general election to approve an infant immunisation programme against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), so that babies can be protected next winter.
    In June 2023 the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations (JCVI) recommended developing an RSV immunisation programme for infants and for older adults.1 It issued a fuller statement reiterating the advice in September 2023.2 But the government has yet to make a final decision on rolling out an RSV immunisation programme.
    A letter signed by more than 2000 paediatricians and healthcare professionals says that the sooner a full RSV vaccination programme is implemented the more effective it will be and that it “could save child health services reaching breaking point.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: BMJ, 20 March 2024
  17. Sam
    The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has launched a £50m “Challenge” funding call to tackle inequalities in maternity care.
    The funding call aims to establish a research consortium to deliver research and capacity building over five years.
    The call was announced as part of the Department for Health and Social Care’s women’s health priorities for 2024.
    Recent evidence suggests that Black women in the UK are almost three times more likely to die during pregnancy or up to six weeks after pregnancy compared to white women. Asian women are twice as likely to die during pregnancy or shortly after, compared to white women.
    The new consortium is hoped to bring together experts across the UK to help change numbers like these.
    The research aims to focus on inequalities before, during and after pregnancy. According to NIHR, a key aim is to identify specific areas where measurable improvements can be made.
    Relevant charities, patient groups, community groups and the life sciences industry will be involved in the research where appropriate.
    Professor Marian Knight, scientific director for NIHR Infrastructure, said: “I am hugely excited about what this research can achieve – funding truly innovative approaches to tackle maternity inequalities will save women’s and babies’ lives – this is a challenge the NIHR is ideally placed to deliver.”
    Read full story
    Source: FemTech World, 15 March 2024
  18. Sam
    A group of doctors offered a controversial medical technique which allegedly put kidney patients' health at risk.
    At least 20 patients at Queen Alexandra Hospital (QA) in Portsmouth have been using the procedure, which is not recommended in UK guidelines.
    A consultant was wrongly sacked from the hospital in 2018 after objecting to the practice.
    The hospital trust said the safety and care of its patients was its priority.
    Jasna Macanovic, who worked at the QA for 17 years, had raised concerns about the way the trust was allowing some staff to deliver the dialysis technique - known as buttonholing.
    "I don't think they're fit to practise medicine," Dr Macanovic told the BBC.
    When Dr Macanovic examined the records of 15 patients using the buttonholing technique at the QA, she found infection rates four times higher than they experienced using the standard technique.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 15 March 2024
  19. Sam
    NHS doctor Chris Day has won the right to challenge a tribunal decision which raises questions about information governance in NHS hospital trusts and the use of digital evidence by employment tribunals.

    Day blew the whistle on acute understaffing at a South London intensive care unit linked to two patient deaths in 2013. His decade-long legal campaign has since exposed the lack of statutory whistleblowing protections for nearly 50,000 doctors below consultant level in England.

    An appeal tribunal in February refused Day the right to challenge key aspects of an earlier tribunal ruling that cleared Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust (LGT) of deliberately concealing evidence and perverting the course of justice when one of the trust’s directors “deliberately” deleted up to 90,000 emails midway through a tribunal hearing in July 2022.

    Day’s high-profile case nevertheless continues to raise questions about information governance practices in NHS hospital trusts and the degree of scrutiny applied to digital evidence retention and disclosure practices at UK employment tribunals.
    The 2022 tribunal heard that LGT communications director David Cocke had attempted to destroy up to 90,000 emails and other electronic archives that were potentially critical to the case as the hearing progressed.
    However, any remaining documents among the tens of thousands of emails and electronic archives, which NHS trust lawyers told the tribunal had been “permanently” destroyed, are likely still to exist and be recoverable, according to an expert consulted by Computer Weekly.
    Read full story
    Source: Computer Weekly, 19 March 2024
  20. Sam
    The ceiling of an intensive care ward collapsed onto a patient on life support and hours later a falling lift broke a doctor’s leg in a 24-hour snapshot of Britain’s crumbling NHS hospitals last week.
    Staff rushed to evacuate the ten-bed unit at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, in Harlow, Essex, and the local trust declared a major incident on Thursday morning as engineers carried out urgent safety checks and patients were moved to other wards.
    The next day, a surgeon was in a lift at the Royal London Hospital, in Whitechapel, east London, when the lift plummeted four floors. His leg was broken when the lift’s emergency brakes activated. Hospital managers shut down four other lifts pending a safety investigation. The day before, another lift in the hospital had also fallen.
    The incidents signify that “chickens are coming home to roost” after years of underinvestment in NHS facilities, Dame Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons public accounts committee, said.
    “It’s a sign of the crumbling infrastructure, not just of our hospitals but of the whole country,” she said. “These are not conditions that patients or hospital staff should have to work in.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 17 March 2024
  21. Sam
    While employment for new clinicians was positive in the last year with 96% of new nurses finding work, the issue is transitioning those clinicians from education into bedside and hospital practice, which is the most pressing safety challenge of 2024, according to the ECRI's annual report on patient safety.
    "[T]here is growing concern about the difficulty of transitioning new clinicians from education to practice — in the face of several factors exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic," an overview of the report states. "Without sufficient preparation, support, and training, new clinicians can experience loss of confidence, burnout, and reduced mindfulness around culture of safety. The combination of these factors may lead to preventable harm."
    The ECRI publishes independent medical device evaluations, annually aggregates scientific literature and patient safety events, concerns reported to or investigated by the organization, and other data sources to create its top 10 report.
    Each topic that landed in this year's top 10 "represents a failure in at least one of these areas; in fact, many overlap and their roots are found in multiple areas," the report notes. 
    Read full story
    Source: Becker Hospital Review, 11 March 2024
  22. Sam
    Bereaved relatives have accused ministers of dragging their feet over an inquiry into the death of almost 2,000 patients across NHS mental health trusts in Essex.
    The inquiry has still not started more than eight months after the announcement that it would be relaunched with beefed-up powers.
    In June last year, the government gave in to pressure from families and the then chair of the inquiry, granting it legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence. In December, the new terms of reference were sent to ministers, setting out what the inquiry will investigate.
    But the terms of reference have yet to be approved by ministers, leaving relatives frustrated, with another “unnecessary” death reported a few weeks ago.
    Melanie Leahy, whose son, Matthew, died at the Linden Centre in Chelmsford in 2012, said: “I know that this inquiry, the first of its kind nationally, if carried out in a timely and comprehensively investigative manner, it has the power to prevent more deaths, not just in Essex but all over the UK.
    “Why am I and all the other bereaved families and injured individuals still waiting? Worse, why are we being met with such callous and terrifying indifference? Why are our legal team being ignored? We can only conclude that our government simply does not care. If the government continues to drag its feet in this way then they must be held to account for their failings. If there are more deaths during this interminable wait, this government needs to be held responsible.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 12 March 2024
  23. Sam
    Nearly 70 healthcare workers with Long Covid will take their fight to the High Court later to sue the NHS and other employers for compensation.
    The staff, from England and Wales, believe they first caught Covid at work during the pandemic and say they were not properly protected from the virus.
    Many of them say they are left with life-changing disabilities and are likely to lose income as a result.
    The Department of Health said "there are lessons to be learnt" from Covid.
    The group believe they were not provided with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) at work, which includes eye protection, gloves, gowns and aprons.
    In particular, they say they should have had access to high-grade masks, which help block droplets in the air from patient's coughs and sneezes which can contain the Covid virus.
    But the masks they were given tended to be in line with national guidance.
    Rachel Hext, who is 36, has always insisted that she caught Covid in her job as a nurse in a small community hospital in Devon.
    "It's devastating. I live an existence rather than a life. It prevents me doing so much of what I want to do. And it's been four years."
    Her list of long Covid symptoms includes everything from brain fog and extreme fatigue to nerve damage, and deafness in one ear.
    Solicitor Kevin Digby, who represents more than 60 members of the group, describes their case as "very important".
    He says: "It's quite harrowing. These people really have been abandoned, and they are really struggling to fight to get anything.
    "Now, they can take it to court and hope that they can get some compensation for the injuries that they've suffered."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 6 March 2024
    Related reading on the hub:
    Healthcare workers with Long Covid: Group litigation – a blog from David Osborn The pandemic – questions around Government governance: a blog from David Osborn  
  24. Sam
    Scrapping the new Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will leave thousands of New Zealanders exposed to ongoing harm from dodgy medical devices, warn patient safety advocates and legal experts.
    The act, which was due to come into force in 2026, would have modernised the regulation of medicines and natural health products, and made medical devices, as well as cell, gene and tissue therapies, subject to a similar regulatory regime as drugs.
    The industry has backed the move, saying the new law was heavy-handed and would stop people getting access to the latest lifesaving technological advances.
    However, Auckland woman Carmel Berry — who was left in constant knife-like pain from plastic mesh implanted during surgery — said she was “living proof” of the old system’s failures.
    It took more than 10 years of lobbying by her and the other founders of Mesh Down Under to get authorities to take action — a decade in which hundreds of other people were injured.
    She is horrified that the TPA, signed into law in only July, is on the chopping block.
    Beginning work to repeal it was No 47 out of 49 points on the Government’s to-do list for its first 100 days.
    “I’m horrified. After so many years of developing and rewriting the act and getting it through ... shame on them.”
    Read full story
    Source: New Zealand Herald,  18 February 2024
  25. Sam
    It is still unclear how unauthorised metal parts came to be implanted in a number of the 19 children with spina bifida who suffered significant complications after spinal surgery.
    But it has emerged that one child died and 18 others suffered a range of complications after surgery at Temple Street Children’s Hospital – with several needing further surgery, including the removal of metal parts which were not authorised for use.
    Parents of the children undergoing complex surgery were left distraught by the disclosures that emerged yesterday, after campaigning for years while the young patients in need of operations deteriorated on waiting lists.
    Gerry Maguire, of Spina Bifida Hydrocephalus Ireland, said “absolute horror is being visited on parents and their advocates”.
    He condemned as disturbing the information which is “being drip-fed to his group and “more alarmingly the families concerned”. One mother expressed concern about further delays in surgery and said children are too complex to be taken for care abroad.
    Read full story
    Source: Irish Independent, 19 September 2023
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