What's the difference between South African state police killing an innocent taxi-driver and UK state NHS staff killing innocent patients?

What's the difference between South African state police killing an innocent taxi-driver and UK NHS staff killing innocent patients?
 

Is there one? - Yes. - The South African police involved have been arrested...

Francis Report fails to deliver

The Francis Report of the public enquiry into the years-long atrocities that caused horrendous unnecessary suffering to vulnerable patients, and up to 1200 avoidable deaths, and the worst scandal in the history of the NHS, is available to download in PDF format here: http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/report - After a 31 month public enquiry costing millions of ££, the report has failed to recommend criminal prosecutions for those many, many staff who delivered death instead of care. None of the ghastly staff so gravely at fault has been 'named and shamed'. They have not even lost their jobs. Surely they should be subject to criminal charges? If there is no accountability for even 'the worst scandal in the history of the NHS' then there is no hope at all of ending the cruelty and inhumanity so widely evident in so many NHS hospitals.

Is the unaccountability of NHS staff the greatest threat to the health of UK citizens?

Is the unaccountability of NHS staff the greatest threat to the health of UK citizens? - Certainly many people would be of that opinion - especially if they have had personal experience of serious NHS negligence or a member of their family has suffered because of it. - Until you experience the NHS Complaints Procedures for yourself you can have no conception of how useless, evil and corrupt they are: how the NHS routinely and literally gets away with murder. Read in today's Telegraph report how despite presiding over the avoidable suffering and deaths of around 400 patients at that infamous, inhuman Stafford hospital between January 2005 and March 2009, Martin Yeates is not even going to appear at the public inquiry into the scandal. Like many another overpaid apology for a public servant he is claiming to be too ill to be questioned. - That 'illness' is Cowardice.

Whistleblowing Gastroenterologist Alleges Intimidation at Stafford Hospital

The Telegraph reports that a whistle-blowing consultant, Pradip Singh, has told the House of Commons all-party Health Committee about "the medical practices that may have led to hundreds of deaths at a scandal-hit NHS hospital."

Whistleblowers are not welcome in the NHS.

Another example, from before the big scandal broke, of Stafford Hospital managers covering up abuse and neglect of patients.

The Sunday Telegraph reports that a nurse provided senior managers with details of her concerns in November 2007 - 16 months before the scandal was revealed - and that her report said that doctors and nurses were being ordered to discharge people who were critically ill and to lie about how long others were waiting.

There will be a debate in parliament on Monday, which will hear demands for a public inquiry into the deaths of hundreds of patients at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust, where standards of care were appalling.

I recommend you read the Sunday Telegraph report. It has a wealth of detail.

In the wake of the Stafford Hospital scandal, The Sunday Telegraph is launching a campaign to avoid any repeat of such a crisis

Overview of the Stafford Hospital Scandal and suggested measures to prevent its happening again
article in the Sunday Telegraph

You may also like to visit

The Patients Association

If you are interested in Patients' Rights you may like to consider signing a petition, which can be found here:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/patientrights/

And you may be interested to look at the list of current petitions to Number 10 Downing Street in the "Health, well-being and care" category. They are here:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/list/open?cat=557

Read this and weep!

Mary Riddell's article in the Telegraph about the horrors of Stafford Hospital and the NHS

As well as Mary Riddell's frank article, be sure to read the comments below it. No-one should comfort themselves that the Stafford Hospital scandal is a one-off. - It very clearly is not.

In the wake of the Staffordshire Hospital scandal...

Who will be sacked in the wake of the Staffordshire Hospital scandal?
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The scale of the failure at Staffordshire General Hospital almost defies belief. Dehydrated patients forced to drink water from flower vases, accident victims left untended for hours, clinical judgements being made by receptionists. To call this Third World treatment is an insult to the Third World.

This appalling, incompetent management has exacted a terrible price. Anything from 400 to 1200 patients may have died unnecessarily as a result of the neglect. Not since Harold Shipman was still in general practice have NHS patients been so dreadfully betrayed.

The independent Healthcare Commission was alerted to the scandal by the high mortality rates in what it calls an "early warning system". That was in March last year, three years after the hospital had descended into chaos and a month after it won foundation status. Some early warning system."

When NHS care goes badly wrong as in this dreadful case, there is always a cover-up; there are always lies told by those in charge and/or by health professionals protecting colleagues in the profession. When, years ago, I tried desperately, but unsuccessfully, to obtain urgent treatment that was being denied me purely to avoid having to admit the severity and the length of time of the negligence and agonising pain I had suffered and was suffering, I found to my cost that no-one in management gives a toss for the suffering of patients, and that for the overwhelming majority of health professionals their priorities are money, power, status and reputation, and that management and health professionals combine in closing ranks against the common enemy, viz. the patients they have harmed and the families of those patients. It was nonetheless a bit of a shock when I discovered that the NHS itself and the Department of Health and so many other agencies and ministers and MPs and other individuals all join in with the lies and evasions and there is literally no-one in the entire edifice of the Health Service to whom one can turn and be assured of getting help.

This sorry debacle was not discovered or winkled out by the Healthcare Commission. It is because of the monumental efforts and persistence of relatives of patients who suffered/died in this Hell of a hospital that the general public has come to know about it. There is, in practice, no protection from this sort of ghastly treatment. The routine of lies, obfuscation and whitewash ensures this, and even if some sort of action is eventually taken it is only after inordinate delay.

Those most responsible for the horrors endured by patients at this hospital should, in my opinion, be tried in the criminal court and sent to prison. This would encourage others in positions of power to have some care for the patients' welfare and treatment. - But as it is - and as it sadly will remain - instead of prison, the 'guilty' will most likely move on to other similar posts and yet again there will have been no appropriate sanctions against these crimes against humanity.