The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Disgraced former surgeon “assessed” by police.
Former patients hand medical papers to police and call for an end to ‘NHS platitudes’
Police Scotland is being urged to launch a criminal investigation into the medical work of a former Ninewells surgeon.
Former patients Patrick Kelly, 58, from Dundee, and Jules Rose, 50, from Kinross, have given medical papers to police in Dundee and demanded “real action”.
Professor Muftah Salem Eljamel, who had been a consultant neurological surgeon with NHS Tayside from 1995, was suspended in 2014 after a patient was given surgery on the wrong spinal disc at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.
He also had to step down from his teaching and research posts at Dundee University after the interim order by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.
The General Medical Council later allowed Mr Eljamel to remove himself from the medical register, after ruling it was in the best interests of patients.
A national hotline was subsequently set up to identify possible victims of Mr Eljamel.
Mr Kelly said: “The reason I went to the police was that I was sick and tired of them failing to take responsibility for what took place and the suffering that has gone on amongst Eljamel’s patients.
“I would also like to see the Scottish Government set up a totally independent investigative unit so that people who feel that they have been harmed by the NHS can get justice and their cases will be listened to.
“This nonsense about ‘lessons being learned’ – platitudes and buzzwords that come out of the NHS – must end.”
Mr Kelly demanded an investigation into “the criminal failings involved in my care, the behaviour of the surgeon, and the wider failings of Tayside NHS to manage the competence and performance of safety critical staff”.
The former DJ suffers chronic back pain after what he claims was a “botched operation” by Mr Eljamel in 2007.
Ms Rose was operated on by Mr Eljamel in August 2013 – one month after he was placed under supervision – and the surgeon removed a tear gland instead of a brain tumour in the course of the operation.
Mr Eljamel remains the subject of civil cases in relation to surgery carried out.
A Police Scotland spokesman said: “A complaint has been received, and is currently being assessed.”
A spokeswoman for NHS Tayside said it would not be adding to the statement it released last week, when its medical director, Professor Andrew Russell, reassured patients that NHS Tayside “complies with all national standards relating to spinal surgery, with patient safety front and centre of every procedure carried out”.