BRITAIN ON A KNIFE-EDGE
It is 3.30pm... medics sprint past me, pushing a trolley towards theatre. On it lies yet another stab victim. It is a teenage boy, his whole life should be ahead of him. Now that life is ebbing away...
IT was the most macabre of coincidences, yet somehow grimly and shockingly apt…
As I spoke to one of the country’s top trauma surgeons about dealing with the victims of knife attacks, just such a patient was wheeled past… on his way to die.
Prof Shehan Hettiaratchy turned to me and said quietly: “I don’t think he is going to make it.”
I SUDDENLY found myself on the front line of Britain’s knife crime emergency within an hour of arriving at one of the country’s busiest hospitals yesterday.
The latest victim of the epidemic, a teenage boy, lay motionless on a trolley as blood poured from his chest.
Professor Shehan Hettiaratchy, one of the UK’s top surgeons for treating such horrific injuries, had just explained to me that the number of knife cases had doubled since 2010.
“I don’t think he’s going to make it,” he told me after speaking to a colleague. “It’s quite alarming how casual it has all become.”
The surgical team had said nothing as they wheeled the trolley past, 30 seconds after a man in blue scrubs calmly asked us: “Could I trouble you to move to one side?”
They left large drops of blood marking the otherwise spotless laminate flooring at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, West London.
About 90 minutes earlier a teenager,
believed to be the patient. was knifed in the chest during a daylight attack nearby. Seeing the horror unfold, I froze as I witnessed what, tragically for the medics around me, was just another day at work.
Prof Hettiaratchy leads one of four main trauma centres in the capital, where there has been a spate of fatal stabbings this year.
“We are getting between one and two [ knife] injuries a day,” he said.
“If you go back to when we started as a trauma centre in 2010 we were probably getting half that. It’s gone from these being unusual to essentially our bread and butter.”
He said: “It’s really hard to deal with. It’s harder for nurses, who are exposed more to the patients who are injured and often just scared. These are just normal kids.”
Prof Hettiaratchy said his surgical team now typically treats stab wounds to the body and slash injuries to the arms and legs.
He said: “We know there is a higher incidence of people being stabbed in the back of the legs, which is quite hard to do. Or stabbed in the buttocks. I guess the rationale is that if you stab someone in the back of the legs you
are was less widespread likely to be shock done at for the murder.” scene of There the latest knifing in West Kensington. Locals described the area as “generally safe”.
Robert Carter, 68, said: “There has only been one serious knife incident around here in the past three years that I can recall. This has really shaken the local community particularly with the news that the boy has died.” Police sealed off the streets near a Waitrose supermarket, where the attack took place.
Prof Hettiaratchy said: “Every victim of knife crime that comes in here brings [the problem] home to you. We had a 15-year-old kid brought in, in his school uniform, still alive saying, ‘ Don’t let me die’, then he died.
“With trauma patients generally your body will fight to survive. It will compensate to keep you alive right to the last moment.
“As the body becomes exhausted, the patient becomes aware of it.”
Friends and relatives of the injured have even become targets at the hospital.
The professor said: “We had people attacked within hospital grounds with a knife last year. This was people waiting for the friends of one of the people who were injured.
“I think we have this concept that a hospital is like a place of sanctuary and safety. “Even that is not the case.”
The Met said the West Kensington stabbing victim’s next of kin had been informed. No arrests had been made last night.