TV STAR CLAIMS DAD DIED FROM DRUGS HOSPITAL GAVE HIM
TELEVISION presenter Fiona Phillips believes her father was a victim of “manslaughter” as a result of dementia drugs administered in hospital. The Welsh-born former GMTV host, who grew up in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, said the recent coverage of hundreds of deaths at the Gosport War Memorial Hospital stirred up memories of her father’s decline after he was admitted to a hospital six years ago.
In a column for the Daily Mirror yesterday, Phillips said her father, Neville, died of multiple organ failure after being placed on a mental health ward.
Before his death she had discovered he was receiving a number of drugs including a “dangerous anti-psychotic”.
A dementia sufferer, Mr Phillips had been “kicked out” of a specialist care home after an aggressive episode associated with his condition, she said.
“In the early hours of the next morning I received a phone call saying he’d been admitted to a mental health ward,” she said.
“I got in my car, belted down there, and found him slumped in a chair, his limbs limp but heavy.”
Hospital staff said he was given a drug to help him sleep.
“Each time I visited, he’d rated.
“He piled on weight, couldn’t get up without assistance and was clearly overmedicated,” she said.
Phillips said she was left “staggered” deterio- on a later visit when she found his drug sheet had become “an A4 page filled with various medications, including a dangerous anti-psychotic”.
“Anti-psychotics are not recommended for people with dementia,” she wrote.
The presenter said she ordered doctors to take her father off all drugs and asked to see a consultant, but her father died in hospital a few days later.
She wrote: “I received a letter following my dad’s death saying staff hoped I’d take comfort in the fact that the mental health unit had “changed procedures” following the manslaughter (my use of the word, not theirs) of my dad.
“I didn’t seek punishment for what had happened because I didn’t want to cause misery for another human being.
“The guilt of not seeking justice for my dad lives with me every day.”
A damning report released this week said more than 450 people had their lives shortened after being prescribed powerful painkillers at Gosport War Memorial Hospital.
An additional 200 patients were “probably” similarly given opioids between 1989 and 2000 without medical justification.
Relatives of elderly patients who died at the hospital have called for criminal prosecutions to be brought.