NOW HEAR OUR VOICE: THE CAMPAIGN
Victims demand Patients’ Commissioner after inquiry savages health system and governments over mesh use despite warnings
Author of landmark report backs mesh victims’ call for patients’ champion
Mesh victims in Scotland yesterday led calls for the Scottish Government to appoint a Patients’ Commissioner in the wake of a damning report exposing how they were failed by a health system that refused to acknowledge their suffering or take action to ease it.
A patients’ champion to investigate complaints and hold authorities to account is one of the recommendations in the 300-page report by Baroness Julie Cumberlege, a former health minister, who detailed the lost lives, pain and needless suffering of thousands of mesh-damaged women.
Scottish Mesh Survivors, which has fought for the life-changing injuries caused by mesh to be acknowledged for almost a decade, says the report is vindication for their fight and exposes how the regulatory system allowed the use of mesh, Primodos and sodium valproate despite concern over many years. The women believe the Scottish Government had the opportunity to lead the world in tackling the worldwide scandal but were too influenced by a medical and regulatory establishment that refused to act or take the women seriously.
They are now demanding Health Secretary Jeane Freeman appoint a Scottish Patients’ Commissioner to take on the medical establishment on behalf of patients. Publishing her report last week, Baroness Cumberlege said she was shocked by what she had found and spoke of a “sexist, disbelieving culture, arrogant doctors, altered records”. The baroness did listen to the voices ignored for so long despite
life-changing injuries that went largely ignored by those supposed to care.
Her report called for a Patient’s Safety Commissioner, along with a complete shake-up of the regulatory system. The baroness said she would forever remember the “harrowing, sheer scale and intensity of suffering”, and would “take those stories to her grave”. Scottish mesh survivor Elaine Holmes said: “Scotland paved the way for the Cumberlege Report, which recommended most of the things we’ve been calling for over the last eight years. For every victory we achieved, we had years of frustration and doors slamming in our faces as those supposed to treat us, care for us and protect us, betrayed our trust and faith again and again.
“Our greatest wish now is Scotland finishes what we started, and puts in place measures to ensure patients in future are given greater protection and a louder voice than we had. By stopping short of a total ban on mesh, the Cumberlege Report leaves the door open for it to return, so we’ll continue campaigning until it’s no longer something that can be used to harm women.”
Former health secretary Alex Neil said: “It’s time we not only had a Patient’s Commissioner with broad powers to act not just on safety matters, but to listen to patients and put them at the very heart of our NHS, but also our own medical regulatory system.”
Labour’s Neil Findlay described the Cumberlege Report as “very uncomfortable reading for surgeons, regulators, medical manufacturers, government ministers and the medical establishment who have collectively failed women in Scotland, across the UK and indeed the world”, and called for the Scottish Government to act. And he has called for a debate on how Scotland will adopt the recommendations and move forward.