Painkillers killed 450 patients in Britain

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London, June 20: An inquiry has revealed that up to 650 patients had died from lethal doses of opiate painkillers given “without medical justification” over 12 years at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in Hampshire, an NHS hospital, the British government has said.

Criminal charges now follow.

A public inquiry found that during the tenure of one general practitioner, Dr Jane Barton, an “institutionalised practice of shortening lives” between 1989 and 2000 took place.

Hospital staff “marginalised” families who battled for 20 years to have could ■ their loved investigated

The police and medical regulators “failed” them as they did not act or investigate thoroughly.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt told the House of Commons that it appears ones’ and deaths complained. Dr Barton was “principally responsible” for this practice. But senior consultants, nurses, and managers at the hospital were aware of or administered opiates which they should have known could kill the patients.

The Crown Prosecution Service and police would now be reviewing the proof identified by the inquiry to identify charges.

The Gosport Independent Panel found proof of opioid use without clinical justification in 456 of the patients who died. Taking into account missing records — incomplete or deleted routinely after a set period — it concludes there are “probably at least another 200 patients were similarly affected”.

“The documents seen by the Panel show that for a 12 year period a clinical assistant, Dr Barton, was responsible for the practice of prescribing which prevailed on the wards,” the inquiry chair Bishop of Liverpool James Jones said.

This prescription was allowed to continue with the awareness of senior consultants and was carried out by nursing staff who “had a responsibility to challenge this prescribing” but did not, the report found.

Established in 2014 the panel reviewed a million pieces of evidence, and spoke to families or sought records of more than 2,000 patients who died at the hospital between 1987 and 2001 — though a quarter of these were missing.