Novichok alert issued days before mum’s death
AHEALTH expert warned doctors across the UK about the dangers of the Novichok nerve agent just days before the death of Dawn Sturgess, according to a report about a leaked document.
Mother Ms Sturgess, 44, died on Sunday. She and partner Charlie Rowley were both exposed to a “high dose” of chemical weapon Novichok, police have said.
According to The Mirror a medical expert briefed doctors across several counties in southern England on how to treat victims of the Russian toxin before her death.
The couple were taken to Salisbury District Hospital from the Wiltshire town of Amesbury on June 30.
They are the second pair to fight for their lives in 2018 because of Novichok poisoning. Former spy and Russian intelligence official Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, recovered after being poisoned in Salisbury in March.
Apparently a dossier circulated by a medical expert was written five days after Ms Sturgess and Mr Rowley were contaminated by what police described as a “high dose” of Novichok yesterday, the Mirror reports.
The document makes it clear that emergency staff close to the Salisbury attack and the Amesbury outbreak, both in Wiltshire, fear the UK could be rocked by more Novichok cases.
On Sunday, Home Secretary Sajid Javid had claimed during a visit to Amesbury that the “risk to the public remains very low”.
But the health warning leaked to the Mirror seemingly contradicts his assurances. The memo states: “Patients will present with: pinpoint pupils, hypotension, hypothermia, copious secretions, diarrhoea, weakness, twitching muscles, respiratory insufficiency, seizures. Death is by pulseless electrical activity arrest, respiratory arrest.”
The consultant advises that Novichok can penetrate “through skin, ingestion, inoculation, inhalation”.
The expert goes on in the document to list the nerve agent’s horrific symptoms.
One senior health official asks recipients of the email to keep the memo, written on July 5, and “use should you be confronted by patients incapacitated for no clear reason and think they may be subject to a chemical attack from Russia”.
In the memo, drafted by a senior Emergency Medical Consultant at a hospital, The Mirror agreed not to name, recipients are told: “Regarding nerve agents. I’ve written a guide which might be helpful to circulate.
“There’s lots of experience in Salisbury if you are in trouble.”
Doctors and medical staff should keep themselves safe by wearing “long gowns and double-glove with long gloves”, the memo says.