YOUR health hero – the surgeon who fought for women whose pain was ignored for so long
... and the truly remarkable runners up in our celebration of shining stars in the NHS
WHEN we asked you to send us your nomination for the Daily Mail Health Hero awards, in association with Pharmacy2U, we were inundated with stories of dedication and compassion beyond the call of duty. Last night at a glittering gala evening, the Prime Minister met our five finalists and announced the overall winner, Sohier Elneil, a surgeon who’s helped transform the lives of thousands of women. Here, we tell our finalists’ inspiring stories. HEALTH HERO WINNER
AS SOhiER ELnEiL started her medical training, her father had one particular piece of advice for his daughter: ‘Do something to help women’, he urged.
Were he still alive today he would surely be bursting with pride, for she has not only lived up to his expectations, she must surely have far exceeded them.
And it’s in recognition of just how much she’s done for women that last night she was awarded the Daily Mail’s health hero award, at a gala evening attended by the Prime Minister Theresa May, Matt hancock, the Secretary of State for health, Professor Jane Cummings, Chief nursing Officer for England, and other leading igures from across the nhS.
As the Mail reports today, British women currently rank 18th out of 28 European countries for life expectancy because of the health struggles they face.
But Miss Elneil has spent her career doing all she can to challenge the painful realities behind statistics like those — for she is the surgeon who was prepared to listen when women started to complain that the tension-free vaginal tape that had been surgically inserted to help with incontinence or prolapse had left them in crippling pain.
While many others within the medical profession turned a blind eye, telling women the problem was ‘all in their mind’, ‘Suzy’, as she is known to her patients, listened — and decided to investigate.
She was one of the first to perfect a way to remove the mesh — a complex and difficult operation that involves painstakingly removing tiny shards of the tape which, in some cases, will have disintegrated into numerous pieces, each embedding deeply into the patient’s internal tissue.
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work has been on top of her role as a full-time consultant urogynaecological surgeon at University College London hospital, specialising in treating women’s problems such as prolapse and incontinence.
Miss Elneil often operates late at night and works most weekends — she also hasn’t had a holiday in four years — simply to make herself available for the numerous women who seek her help.
One patient described desperately contacting her for help and Miss Elneil responding by email the next day — on Boxing Day.
She feels that she must, as she explains: ‘The numbers of women wanting to see me are overwhelming. i’m trying my best to transform lives, but sometimes when i operate i feel bereft because when i see what has happened to a woman i know just how much she must have been suffering. i have seen women who are in so much pain as a result of their tape they feel suicidal.’
Such is the impact this remarkable surgeon has had on her patients’ lives that when the Daily Mail launched their hunt for the 2018 health hero of the year, it wasn’t just her patients from across the UK who inundated us with letters and emails in praise of her work, it was also their husbands.
‘Miss Elneil is the first consultant to actually help my wife,’ wrote one. ‘ She is the most skilled, compassionate, wonderful, caring consultant i have ever met. She works tirelessly to help so many women who have been mutilated by mesh and they feel like their life has come to an end. She’s an angel.’
in a phrase that was repeated time and again, one patient said: ‘She was the only surgeon who listened to me after years of trying to get help for mesh pain.’
Retired accountant Lynne Sharman was particularly fulsome in her praise. ‘i can’t thank her enough for what she has done for me’ says Lynne, 62, who lives in Reading.
‘She has this air of calm and tranquility. i don’t think she ever sleeps as she has so much to do but if she is tired she doesn’t let it show.’
Miss Elneil is clearly touched by the reaction from her patients. ‘i get some lovely cards. Amazing letters from women thanking me,’ she says.
Yet she’s has also attracted a very different reaction from within her own profession, sometimes facing outright hostility from those who thought she was wrong to raise the issue of the tape in the first place.
Carl hengan, a professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, says: ‘it’s very difficult to stand firm when you’re going against a swathe of colleagues, who’ve used various ruses to undermine her — i’m sure it hurts. But it doesn’t stop her.’
Miss Elneil herself says there was never any question of giving up. ‘There was resistance, and some people thought “if we ignore her she might go away” but i wasn’t prepared to do that,’ she says with a glint in her eye.
inevitably, her commitment and daunting work load have come at some cost to her home life. But her husband, a lawyer and a childhood friend, has been a tower of support.
‘We are lucky in that we have a lot of input from family and friends, and a lot of support,’ she says. She has tried to take one day off at weekends — but with a full general list as well as extra cases of tape removal — and her commitment to ensuring she trains other surgeons, to ensure she hands over her skills — there is barely time to breathe.
And then, of course, there is the research — last year, for example, she co-authored a report for the
first time identifying the rate of complications among women given the mesh.
As vindication of her patients and her work — and the Mail’s long-running campaign on this issue — the NHS recently announced it would halt the use of the mesh for incontinence.
But anyone who thinks Miss Elneil has achieved all she wants to achieve would be mistaken — there are still many women who need their tape removed, and that’s not all.
‘I would like us to live in a world where women feel safe, where they feel they can talk to anyone about their health concerns and not be dismissed,’ she says.
‘I’d like to change that — I’ve passed the age barrier of 50 and I have so much more to do, and now so little time to do it.’