Outrage at award of £190K damages to Rose Gibb, CEO of NHS hospital where 90 patients died during superbug outbreak in overcrowded, dirty wards.

See BBC News report. In my opinion, this woman should have received a prison sentence, rather than a huge payout.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been found guilty in a Health and Safety case.

HSE warning follows hospital fall
News Distribution Service for Government and the Public Sector

Extract:

"The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is reminding hospitals and other care providers to ensure the safety of their patients, especially from the dangers of open windows.

The warning follows the prosecution by HSE of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust after an incident at the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield, when a young man was severely injured after falling from a third floor window.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (formerly Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust) was fined £18,000 plus costs of £15,399.05 at Sheffield Magistrates' Court today, after pleading guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

On 28 May 2004 the young man, a patient on Ward Firth 6 at the Northern General Hospital, was found to have fallen almost 12 metres to the ground from a window that had been fitted with a device intended to limit its opening to no more than 10cm which, because it was poorly maintained, did not restrict the window adequately. The patient survived the fall but suffered a number of fractures and serious internal injuries."

It took a very long time to get to court, didn't it? - Over four and a half years! - Why?

The hospital trust at the centre of Britain's worst recorded hospital superbug outbreak which led to the death of 331 patients has escaped prosecution

Superbug hospital escapes criminal charges
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Clostridium difficile contributed to the deaths of the patients over two-and-a-half years at three Kent hospitals a health watchdog report found.

Appalling standards of care, crowded wards, financial problems, a shortage of nurses and poor hygiene all led to the outbreak the Healthcare Commission found in a highly critical report in October.

However after studying that report, Kent Police and the Health and Safety Executive said there would be no charges over the deaths at hospitals run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Hospital Trust.

Assistant Chief Constable Allyn Thomas said: "Whilst the report makes for grim and at times distressing reading, our review has not identified any information that would indicate a need or duty to conduct a criminal investigation into the Trust at this time."

Relatives of those who died in the outbreak reacted angrily to the announcement.

Steve Stroud, whose 77-year-old stepmother Doreen Ford died in Maidstone Hospital said he was "disgusted" by the decision.

Mr Stroud, husband of former Bucks Fizz singer Cheryl Baker, said: "This is disgusting. Someone has got to be held to account over all these deaths and if it is not the hospital trust, then who the hell can it be?

"Someone really should have to carry the can over this... for no charges to be pressed is really disgusting. I can't believe it".

Baker, described the death of her mother-in-law as "legalised killing".

She said: "The Trust is to blame, I know that, everyone knows it and it makes my blood boil.

"Those patients didn't die by chance, they died because they contracted C diff at the Trust because of poor hygiene and care, so they are to blame, without a shadow of a doubt."

The Healthcare Commission had found the infection probably or definitely killed 90 people and was a factor in a further 241 deaths.

It also criticised the then chief executive of the trust, Rose Gibb, who left before the findings were published and is now reported to be fighting for a payout of several hundred thousand pounds.

But police said the report held no evidence that the deaths amounted to manslaughter."

Beggars belief, doesn't it?- All those deaths. All that suffering. All that sadness. - No-one held to account...

Without accountability there is less likelihood of improvement...

Warning about NHS superbugs went unheeded...

Labour failed to heed NHS superbugs warning - Sunday Telegraph

Extracts:

"They were told last October, in a confidential memo which The Sunday Telegraph has seen, that hospitals were not taking the problem seriously and that £270 million was needed urgently to combat the bug. But Labour provided just £50 million, topped up by another £50 million this summer as public concern grew. The memo was written by Liz Woodeson, the head of the Department of Health's infection unit, just a month after Britain's biggest superbug outbreak infected 1,100 patients at three Kent hospitals, killing 90 and contributing to the deaths of 240.

Miss Woodeson warned the then health secretary Patricia Hewitt that "virtually all trusts" were reporting outbreaks. "We suspect some trusts simply see it as an unavoidable fact of hospital life," she said.

Miss Woodeson added that £270 million should be invested in efforts to combat bugs, including £200 million on isolation rooms.

Cases have risen five-fold in the past decade, with 55,000 now reported annually, while the number of deaths linked to it tripled over four years to reach almost 4,000 by 2005.

Clostridium difficile is a highly contagious bacterium commonly caught from touching contaminated surfaces."

"A Healthcare Commission investigation into Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust found "significant failings" in infection control at three of its hospitals between April 2004 and September 2006. They included unwashed bedpans, a lack of isolation units and beds too close together.

Maidstone's MP Ann Widdecombe, cared for her mother Rita at home until her death in May aged 95 rather than send her to Maidstone Hospital.

She said: "Old folk go into our hospitals and die of dehydration because drips run out. They starve when trays are taken away with meals untouched. They ring bells for nurses which are ignored."

Police and the Health and Safety Executive are investigating the Kent outbreak."

Key questions about the foot and mouth outbreak

Key questions about foot and mouth - Telegraph

Extract:

"Are the Legionnaires' and foot and mouth outbreaks linked?

Only by the fact that both centre on the Government's Institute for Animal Health (IAH) at the Pirbright complex in Surrey and both investigations involve testing water samples that can harbour the conditions, thus raising questions about the site's drainage systems. The Legionnaires' investigation began in June and the victim had already recovered by the time the first case of foot and mouth was recorded.

How damaging is the Legionnaires' outbreak to Pirbright?

Very. The Government, which licenses and inspects the research site, has been forced to fend off severe criticism about conditions there and health and safety concerns are resurfacing. The Health and Safety Executive has already pointed to drainage systems at the private Merial laboratory - which shares the Pirbright complex - as being a possible cause for the foot and mouth outbreak. Further tests are ongoing. The Health Protection Agency also took water samples from the site, the results of which are not yet known, after they found small samples of the Legionella bacteria in the IAH building."

Could a scientist have scratched his nose and then unwittingly have triggered the foot and mouth outbreak?

A scratch of the nose and the virus is out - Telegraph

Extract:

"A scientist simply scratching his nose while working with the foot and mouth virus could have been the trigger for the present disease outbreak, a biosecurity expert said yesterday.

Human error is now thought to be the most likely cause of the spread of the disease as investigators try to pinpoint the source of the leak.

All attention is focused on Merial, the private company which shares the Pirbright laboratory complex with the Government-sponsored Institute for Animal Health.

It is feared that gloves or clothes used by workers in the facility may not have been decontaminated properly.

There are also concerns that the virus could have escaped into the laboratory's drainage system and then into storm water caused by flooding which employees inadvertently walked through.

The Health and Safety Executive has all but ruled out initial fears that a faulty filtering system propelled the virus into the atmosphere.

Keith Plum, who has worked as a chartered chemical engineer for 25 years and is involved in the design of biosecure facilities, said humans were a dangerous link in the chain."

Flaws in council policy were to blame for legionnaires' disease deaths.

Legionnaires' disease deaths blamed on flaws in council policy - Guardian

Extract:

"Britain's worst outbreak of legionnaires' disease, which killed seven people and affected 180 others, could have been avoided if the local council had followed readily available safety guidelines, a report concludes today.

The report, prepared for the Health and Safety Executive, follows two public meetings to consider the outbreak of the disease in the air-conditioning system at the Forum 28 arts and leisure centre in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in August 2002.

Colin Pickthall, former Labour MP for West Lancashire, who chaired the inquiry, said that "several flaws were apparent from the start". He told the BBC: "The guidelines on how to avoid legionella were readily available then, as now. They weren't used, they weren't disseminated around the council. They were put in bins or they were put in files.""


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