My wife starved herself to death in care home after I wasn’t let in
A WIDOWER who believes that his wife starved to death in a care home after he was prevented from visiting her due to the coronavirus outbreak is demanding an inquest.
Retired architect Shaikh Rehman would spend six hours a day feeding and caring for his wife Rosemary, who had suffered a stroke and had dementia.
But he was told in early April he could no longer enter Castlemead Care Centre in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, because of restrictions aimed at cutting the risk of Covid-19 infections.
He bought his own extensive personal protective equipment (PPE) – which he says was superior to that worn by staff – but was refused entry. Without her husband and despite the best efforts of the home, Rosemary, 75, began refusing to eat or drink and died on April 23.
Mr Rehman, 81, claims a doctor wanted to record Covid-19 as the cause of death, but he objected because she had no symptoms. In the end, her death certificate stated that she died of the ‘frailty of old age’, which Mr Rehman also disputes. Last night, he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The true facts need to come out here. By the time I was finally allowed to see Rosemary, just before she died, she was a bag of bones. She starved herself to death. Her death was due to the pandemic – but she didn’t die from the virus itself. It wasn’t coronavirus, or the “frailty of old age”. It was death due to a refusal to eat.’
He said his wife ‘lost the will to live’ in her final two weeks, adding: ‘An inquest is needed to investigate if this could have been avoided.’
Leigh Day solicitor Emma Jones, who is acting for Mr Rehman, has written to the Milton Keynes coroner to request an inquest.
She said there had been ‘no issues regarding Rosemary’s health’ in the months prior to lockdown but given her dementia, she would have found it ‘difficult to understand’ why her husband could no longer visit.
Mr Rehman accepts care staff could not force her to eat, but criticises the decision to deny him entry when he had ‘full PPE’. Ms Jones said national guidance makes clear that old age or frailty should be stated as the sole cause of death only ‘in very limited circumstances’, including when the doctor had ‘personally cared for the deceased over a long period’ and was ‘not aware of any identifiable disease or injury that contributed to the death’.
Excelcare, which runs Castlemead, said its infection control procedures were in place to ‘protect those under our care and the people who look after them’. ‘We hope Mr Rehman was able to take some comfort from the time he was able to spend with his wife in her final stages.’
Kingfisher Surgery in Newport Pagnell, whose GP wrote the death certificate, said it was a legal requirement for a doctor to determine the cause or causes of death ‘in accordance with the patient’s clinical presentation’.