You won’t be forgiven
Ministers told they must take action on mesh scandal report
MINISTERS will not be forgiven if they fail to act over a series of health scandals, the author of a damning report warned yesterday.
Tens of thousands of women and children suffered catastrophic harm because of an ‘unresponsive and defensive’ healthcare system, it found.
Baroness Cumberlege, who led the inquiry into pelvic mesh implants, a pregnancy test drug and an epilepsy treatment, said these patients had already waited ‘too long’ to be heard.
Yesterday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: ‘I want to issue a full apology to those who’ve suffered and their families, for the frustration, for the time that it’s taken to get their voices heard. And now their voices have been heard, it’s very important that we learn from this report.’
The report said countless lives
From yesterday’s Mail had been ruined by the pain and suffering caused by three avoidable health disasters. Baroness Cumberlege, a former
Tory health minister, called for an urgent shake-up to rid the NHS of an ‘arrogant and dismissive culture’, which resulted in many doctors writing off patients’ crippling symptoms as ‘women’s problems’.
Unveiling the 277-page report yesterday, she warned the Government that these mistakes must not be repeated and urged ministers to establish a taskforce to implement the ‘radical and wideranging’ recommendations.
‘I have to say, if this government and the health care system ignores our review and another medication and medical device damages people, to the extent that we have witnessed, they will, and should not be forgiven,’ she said.
The review into people harmed by three products – pelvic mesh implants, hormone pregnancy test drug Primodos and epilepsy drug sodium valproate – found mistakes spanning decades.
The NHS, private health providers, manufacturers and Government regulators were all criticised for failing to listen to patients or spot the signs when things went drastically wrong. The review called for measures including the appointment of an independent safety commissioner, an overhaul of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and compensation for victims.
The expert panel, appointed by the then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, spent two years listening to the ‘harrowing accounts’ of more than 700 families across the UK.
Baroness Cumberlege condemned manufacturers, regulators and surgeons for not doing enough to trace those who have been affected by mesh, something the Daily Mail’s Good Health team has spent almost a decade campaigning for.