More families ready to sue over hospital care

1:50pm Tuesday 20th December 2011 in News

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MORE angry families are expected to take legal action against hospital bosses over the “abominable care” of their loved ones.

former nurse Eileen White says her family was devastated by the poor standard of care her husband Colin received before his death from liver failure aged 73 at the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch on October 19, 2009.

now her family wants to join the class action being taken against Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust which already involves at least 23 families and widows of patients.

The case has been taken on by law firm Leigh Day & Co and the company intends to argue that care was so bad it breached the human rights of families.

however, Worcester MP Robin Walker defended the trust and said improvements had been made since the damning report by health and social care watchdog the Care Quality Commission was published in May.

The report raised “major concerns” about hydration and nutrition on wards five and 11 at the Alex, which was one of only two hospitals nationwide where such serious problems were identified.

Mrs White, aged 73, of Aldridge, said: “We were told steps were taken to make sure this didn’t happen again but nothing changed.

“The care my husband received was abominable.

“They kept saying he wouldn’t eat.

“Although he was a desperately ill man, he wasn’t an idiot.

“He said they just ram it in your mouth.

“My son’s last words to the nurses were ‘Get my father off this ward’.

“It’s bad enough to lose a parent or partner or husband but worse to know they’re dying without the care they deserve.

“I used to be a ward manager and I would have been ashamed if I had been the sister on that ward.”

his daughter, Kim White, 49, of Tewkesbury, who works in Vale Wildlife Hospital & Rehabilitation Centre in Beckford, near Tewkesbury, said: “The animals here are treated with more care and dignity than my dad was. We want to join this class action.”

Mr Walker said: “I think any accusations of poor treatment have to be taken very seriously but I do think that, from what I have seen, the acute trust has reacted quite quickly and very seriously to the problems that were identified at the Alexandra Hospital.

“Certainly, an enormous amount of effort has been put in to make sure those mistakes are not repeated and patients get better care in future.

“It’s always a shame when people have to resort to legal action.

“If there are costs to the NHS that doesn’t help the vast majority of people who use its services.”

Helen Blanchard, director of nursing and midwifery, said: “We actively encourage patient feedback and where there is any indication that patient care falls below the high standards we expect all our staff to deliver, we will take immediate action to address this.”

six wards under lockdown

SIX wards at the Alexandra Hospital remain under lockdown because of a violent winter diarrhoea and vomiting bug.

The Redditch hospital has been forced to close all or part of at least six wards because of the highly contagious norovirus outbreaks.

No cases have yet been reported at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester which is also managed by Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

The most recent figures published by the Health Protection Agency show there were five suspected or confirmed outbreaks of norovirus in Worcestershire in the two weeks up to December 11.

each outbreak could potentially contain a number of individuals who have contracted the bug so many more people are likely to be affected than the number of outbreaks recorded. The outbreaks are not just at the Alexandra but across the community and could be in schools and care homes.

Rebecca Bourne, head of communications at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said the number of beds affected by the closures was changing all the time.

“We are grateful to members of the public who have heeded advice to avoid coming to the hospital if they have experienced any vomiting or diarrhoea symptoms in the last 48 hours,” she said.

The trust’s website asks people to only visit the hospital if absolutely necessary. Visitors suffering symptoms such as diarrhoea and/or vomiting should stay at home and seek advice from their GP or NHS Direct.

By SEAN TEEHAN October 19, 2011 12:00 AM

Scientists in Woods Hole and at a Charlestown laboratory are looking under water to treat a disease that robs sufferers of the ability to breathe.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Flatley Discovery Lab have struck a $1.18 million deal to collaborate on a three-year project to find out if microbes from the ocean are the key to finding a drug to treat the underlying disorder behind cystic fibrosis.

In the ocean, which has a vast number of predators, minuscule microbes have little means to protect themselves from being devoured by creatures that are a link or two higher on the food chain.

“They have to use chemistry to defend themselves,” said Tracy Mincer, a WHOI microbiologist and chemist working on the project. “And they produce potent chemicals to do this.”

These chemicals could also work to correct hereditary defects in chronic illnesses such as cystic fibrosis.

Based on that possibility, the Flatley lab, a nonprofit cystic fibrosis research laboratory, is paying WHOI to extract chemicals from oceanic microbes for the experiments.

“It’s just become known over the past 50 years that microbes are a great source of chemical diversity,” Mincer said.

Afflicting about 30,000 people in the United States, cystic fibrosis is caused by a defective gene that creates a thick mucus that clogs the lungs and obstructs the pancreas, preventing it from absorbing food, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Bethesda, Md. Those who suffer from the disorder are unable to efficiently clear their lungs of mucus, so it piles on and thickens like oatmeal left on the stove too long, said Laurie Fink, a spokeswoman for the foundation.

“People have a lot of trouble breathing, and they’re getting these terrible lung infections all the time,” Fink said. Those who suffer from more severe cases feel as if they are holding their noses and trying to breathe through a drinking-straw, she said.

Sufferers lose approximately 2 to 3 percent of their lung function each year and their median life expectancy is in the mid-30s, according to foundation data.

The Flatley Discovery Lab opened about two years ago with the goal of developing a drug that treats the underlying disorder of the disease rather than just symptoms, said Richard Fitzpatrick, Flatley’s chief operating officer and chief scientific officer.

Chemical samples from WHOI will be sent to the Flatley lab where scientists will study how cells afflicted with the disorder react to them, Fitzpatrick said. As tests go on, scientists plan to mix and match chemicals and hope to eventually develop a drug that could succeed in treating the cell deficiency.

Similar processes have led to discoveries of antibiotics such as streptomycin and Augmentin, said Mincer, who discovered a chemical with the potential to treat multiple myeloma, a type of cancer, while he was in graduate school at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego. The chemical is currently in clinical trials.

“We’re on the verge of some breakthrough therapy,” Fink said, noting that there is currently a drug called VX-770 that recently completed its clinical trials and might be able to treat the disorder (rather than just its symptoms) for about 4 percent of cystic fibrosis sufferers. Vertex Pharmaceuticals, maker of the drug, plans to submit a new drug application to the FDA later this month.

Mincer said he believes if the ocean microbe project does not result in a cystic fibrosis breakthrough, it will at least yield good leads as to how to advance treatment.

“It’s really a new frontier for drug discovery,” Mincer said.

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