NHS inquiry as whistleblower alleges opiate pump cover-up

JEREMY HUNT has ordered an urgent NHS inquiry into opiate syringe pumps amid concern that their role in the Gosport War Memorial Hospital deaths scandal was covered up.

A whistleblower has alleged that thousands of elderly patients may have been killed by the devices and that the Gosport inquiry overlooked their use to avoid a national scandal.

The Graseby MS16A and MS26 pumps, which had a “booster” switch but no “stop” button, were banned in the NHS from 2015, two decades after a safety watchdog first raised concerns.

But the Department of Health and Social Care yesterday admitted officials have been told to “urgently look into this matter to ensure no unsafe devices of this kind are being used”.

Designed in the 1970s, the batterypowered “drivers” were built to deliver pain relief drugs automatically, meaning clinicians did not have to administer multiple injections.

In 2001, around 40,000 devices were being used in up to 61 per cent of palliative care units.

However, doctors say the pumps are dangerous because they allow the accidental or deliberate rapid infusion of dangerous drugs into the bloodstream.

While one model is set to deliver the opiates over 24 hours, the other, which looks identical, does the same task in 60 minutes, meaning patients risk being given a day’s drugs in just an hour.

Doctors have said they resorted to sticking on makeshift aluminium strips so they could tell the difference.

Both models were in use at Gosport during the tenure of Dr Jane Barton, whose regime cut short the lives of up to 650 patients between the late 1980s and 2001 due to excessive use of the opiate drug diamorphine.

Police questioned the GP about the devices in 2003 and she declined to comment.

But in the report of the inquiry, led by the Right Reverend James Jones, the former Bishop of Liverpool, the drivers merit only two sentences.

The Sunday Times yesterday reported allegations from a Department of Health and Social Care whistleblower that the report was “one of the biggest cover-ups” in NHS history.

The source alleged the panel had decided to brush over the role of the devices after being warned a helpline and no-fault compensation fund would have to be established if they provoked a national scandal.

The inquiry has fiercely denied the allegations as “completely unfounded”, while Mr Hunt defended the former bishop’s independence.

Incident reports prompted the British medicine regulator to issue “hazardous product” alerts on the drivers as early as 1995. Despite this, and later alerts, an NHS paper described them as an “essential component of British palliative care” as late as 2008.

In 2010, health chiefs finally banned the devices, but gave hospital bosses until 2015 to phase them out.

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “The Health Secretary has asked officials to urgently look into this matter, to ensure that no unsafe devices of this kind are being used.”

Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday, Mr Hunt also said officials would “look at whether the NHS did react quickly enough when it first found out about the safety consequences of these syringes”.