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The Valproate Families: The stories of the families affected by Sodium Valproate in Ireland

Major concerns are being raised about the Irish State’s failure to set up an inquiry into a drug that caused serious birth defects and developmental delays in at least 1,200 Irish babies.

Sodium valproate, a drug used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder, has been estimated to have caused major malformations in up to 341 Irish children between 1975 and 2015 after it was taken by their mothers during pregnancy.

The drug, which is sold in Ireland as Epilim, is also believed to have caused neuro-developmental delays in 1,250 children.

Many women were never warned of the risks that taking the drug during pregnancy would pose to their babies.

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Source: The Irish Independent

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U.S. life expectancy falls again in ‘historic’ setback

The average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 2020 and 2021, the sharpest two-year decline in nearly 100 years and a stark reminder of the toll exacted on the nation by the continuing coronavirus pandemic.

In 2021, the average American could expect to live until the age of 76, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday. The figure represents a loss of almost three years since 2019, when Americans could expect to live, on average, nearly 79 years.

The reduction has been particularly steep among Native Americans and Alaska Natives, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reported. Average life expectancy in those groups was shortened by four years in 2020 alone.

“Even small declines in life expectancy of a tenth or two-tenths of a year mean that on a population level, a lot more people are dying prematurely than they really should be,” said Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the NCHS.

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Source: The New York Times (31 August 2022)

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NHS waiting lists hiding 10m patients in need of follow-up care

More than ten million patients are on “hidden” waiting lists for NHS care.

There are 6.7 million patients on the official NHS waiting list, which includes people who have been referred by GPs for hospital treatment such as cataract or hip and knee surgery.
However, data released by health service trusts under freedom of information laws suggests there are 10.3 million further patients who need follow-up care, illustrating the scale of the task facing the NHS.

Louise Ansari, national director at the patient group Healthwatch England, said: “Waiting a long time for treatment can put a huge strain on patients and their loved ones. But this can be so much worse when there is ‘radio silence’ from the NHS, leaving people uncertain if their referral has been accepted, unclear about how long they may have to wait and often feeling forgotten.”

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Source: The Times (30 August 2022)

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Patients waiting for surgery going to A&E because they 'can't cope'

Patients waiting for surgery are turning up at A&E because they “can't cope”, the head of the NHS Confederation has warned.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the body which represents all areas of the health service, said the NHS was in a "terrible situation" where it was facing "more demand than we can deal with".

Some 6.7 million people are waiting to start hospital treatment after being referred by their GP, latest official data show. Urgent and emergency care is also under significant pressure, with 12-hour A&E waits increasing by a third in July to reach 29,317 - the worst on record.

"We also know that people, many people, who are sick in the community waiting for operations, for example, and that's one of the reasons people end up in the emergency department because they get to the stage where they can't cope,” Mr Taylor said. "So the problem is that pressures in one part of the system drive pressure in others.”

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Source: The Telegraph (30 August 2022)

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Northern Ireland: Doctors considering quitting health service over pay, says BMA

A proposed pay settlement is making doctors consider leaving the health service, the British Medical Association (BMA) in Northern Ireland has said.

In a BMA survey of more than 1,000 doctors, 85% of respondents said the proposed uplift of 4.5% was too low.

The representative body said discontent was very high among junior doctors with 93% of them saying it was too low.

"When asked about their intentions as to the likelihood of them continuing to work in Northern Ireland, junior doctors said they were now more likely to leave because of the low pay award," said the BMA.

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Source: BBC News (31 August 2022)

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Flu could ‘bite’ as early as October, NHS leaders and scientists warn

Flu could “bite” months earlier than usual this year, NHS leaders and scientists have warned, leading to calls for millions to get their vaccination against the disease as soon as possible.

Around 20 million people in the UK, including all over-50s, will be offered a free jab this winter, as ministers fear the combination of a bad flu season, Covid and a cost of living crisis could lead to a spike in deaths.

Saffron Cordery, the interim chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents trusts in England, warned that this year flu had “come early and severely to parts of the southern hemisphere, and we’re going see it here potentially biting in October”.

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Source: The Independent (30 August 2022)

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Britain falls out of love with the NHS: poll reveals three in five now expect delays

People no longer believe the NHS will treat them quickly if they fall ill, according to new polling showing wide dissatisfaction about the state of the health service.

With hundreds of ambulances stacked outside overstretched A&E departments and patients languishing on record waiting lists, voters are far more likely to say the service has worsened than improved in the last year.

Fifty-eight per cent are not confident they would receive timely treatment from the NHS if they fell ill tomorrow, with 36 per cent not confident at all and 22 per cent just not confident. Meanwhile, 45 per cent believe the service they receive has worsened in the past 12 months. Just over half think it has become harder to get an appointment with their local doctor while 41 per cent think their local GP service has worsened.

Robert Ede, head of health and social care at the Policy Exchange think tank, said: “It is concerning to see that a majority of the public don’t believe they would receive timely treatment from the NHS if they became ill tomorrow. There is a risk that the perception of a service in crisis beds in and actually leads to a complete erosion in public confidence."

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Source: The Times (27 August 2022)

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Revealed: ‘disturbing’ race divide on cancer patients’ wait times in England

Black and Asian people in England have to wait longer for a cancer diagnosis than white people, with some forced to wait an extra six weeks, according to a “disturbing” analysis of NHS waiting times.

A damning review of the world’s largest primary care database by the University of Exeter and the Guardian discovered minority ethnic patients wait longer than white patients in six of seven cancers studied. Race and health leaders have called the results “deeply concerning” and “absolutely unacceptable”.

The analysis of 126,000 cancer cases over a decade found the median time between a white person first presenting symptoms to a GP and getting diagnosed is 55 days. For Asian people, it is 60 days (9% longer). For black people, it is 61 days (11% longer).

Michelle Mitchell, the chief executive of Cancer Research UK, which funded the research, said that while the differences are “unlikely to be the sole explanation for the inequalities in cancer survival”, at the very least “extended wait times may cause additional stress and anxiety for ethnic minority patients”.

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Source: The Guardian (28 August 2022)

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‘Vaccine fatigue’ could hit autumn Covid boosters

Britain faces a low uptake of the Covid booster jab this autumn amid “vaccine fatigue” and complacency about the virus, the new Pfizer boss has warned.

The booster campaign starts next week, with care home residents and the housebound the first to be invited. Over-75s and the clinically vulnerable will be able to book appointments from September 12, with a wider rollout for over-50s taking place in phases. Roughly 26 million in England will be eligible.

Susan Rienow, who was appointed UK managing director at Pfizer in February, said: “We have to remain vigilant. I recognise there may be some vaccine fatigue in the population. But making sure that people are boosting their immunity, so that we can prevent people from being hospitalised, is going to be really important.”

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Source: The Times (28 August 2022)

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Biden administration plans for new booster campaign soon after labor day

The Biden administration plans to offer the next generation of coronavirus booster shots to Americans 12 and older soon after Labor Day, a campaign that federal officials hope will reduce deaths from Covid-19 and protect against an expected winter surge.

Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine regulator for the Food and Drug Administration, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not discuss timing, his team was close to authorizing updated doses that would target the versions of the virus now circulating.

Even though those formulations have not been tested in humans, he said, the agency has “extremely good” data showing that the shots are safe and will be effective. “How confident am I?” he said. “I’m extremely confident.”

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Source: The New York Times (23 August 2022)

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Parts of England have one NHS dentist for thousands of people, data shows

Dental patients are still suffering from the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, as parts of England are left with only one NHS dentist for thousands of people.

In North Lincolnshire, there were just 54 NHS dentists – equivalent to one for every 3,199 people – at the end of March, NHS Digital figures show. This means every NHS dentist in the area would have to work nine-hour days every working day of the year without holidays for each resident to receive one annual checkup on the NHS.

Across England, 24,272 dentists treated some NHS patients in the year to 31 March – up 2.3% from the previous year, broadly in keeping with the general population increase in the same period, but lower than pre-pandemic figures for the three previous years.

The chair of the British Dental Association, Eddie Crouch, said the service was “on its last legs” and the figures underlined the need for radical and urgent change. “The government will be fooling itself and millions of patients if it attempts to put a gloss on these figures,” said Crouch. “NHS dentistry is light years away from where it needs to be. Unless ministers step up and deliver much-needed reform and decent funding, this will remain the new normal.”

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Source: The Guardian (25 August 2022)

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Boy, 17, found dead after seeking mental health help ‘had not seen GP in person’

A coroner has expressed concern at the difficulty of getting face-to-face appointments with GPs and other health professionals after a 17-year-old boy suffering from mental health problems was found dead.

Sean Mark, who described himself as an “anxious paranoid mess”, was desperate for help but felt “palmed off” when he asked for assistance, an inquest heard. He was found dead in his bedroom four months after a phone consultation with a GP and before he had spoken to anyone in person about his concerns.

The area coroner, Rosamund Rhodes-Kemp, recorded a verdict of death by misadventure, saying she could not be sure Sean had intended to kill himself.

Dr Robin Harlow, clinical director of the Willow Group, where Sean Mark was a patient, said it had increased the number of face-to-face meetings. When told that Sean felt palmed off, he said: “I would want him to be seen face to face at the second time, if not the first time. We have seen a lot more face-to-face appointments since then.”

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Source: The Guardian (23 August 2022)

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Leaked report shows ‘long-standing’ bullying and discrimination within national agency

Internal documents show significant evidence of bullying and discrimination within NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) which dates back at least eight years, when the organisation was led by the current chief executive of the Care Quality Commission.

HSJ has seen a report which detailed major tensions and dysfunction at NHSBT’s Colindale site in north London in 2016, four years before another report found similar problems.

Given the damning findings of the second report, in 2020 – which found a “toxic environment”, multiple accounts of bullying, and “systemic racism” at the same site – it raises questions around the actions taken by NHSBT’s former leaders, including current CQC boss Ian Trenholm, to address the issues raised in the 2016 report.

The 2016 report was commissioned by the manufacturing directorate and concluded the hospital services department at the Colindale site was “dysfunctional” after a highly contentious reorganisation of some services and teams.

It noted “a series of bullying and harassment incidents” were being reported, but which staff felt were not investigated appropriately, and claims of “discriminatory practice” by managers.

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Source: HSJ, 26 August 2022

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Dr Ted Baker named as preferred candidate for Chair of HSSIB

Dr Ted Baker has been named as the government’s preferred candidate for chair of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB).

Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has today (26 August 2022) invited the Health and Social Care Committee to hold a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing with Dr Baker.

Ted Baker was Chief Inspector of Hospitals at the Care Quality Commission between 2017 and 2022. He trained as a paediatric cardiologist. He was in clinical practice for 35 years and has held a range of clinical and academic leadership roles including medical director at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

He was selected following an open public appointment process.

Following the select committee hearing, the committee will set out its views on the candidate’s suitability for the role. The Secretary of State will then consider the committee’s report before making a final decision on the appointment.

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Source: HSIB, 26 August 2022

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Private mental health unit scrutiny recommended by Norfolk committee

A report into the care of three women at a former mental health unit has recommended greater monitoring and scrutiny of private provision.

The Norfolk Safeguarding Adults Board (NSAB) review focused on care given to women known as L, M and N, who lived at Milestones Hospital near Norwich.

The women, in their 20s, were found to have visited accident and emergency 53 times, mostly due to self-harm. The unit shut down last year and the company that run it has been dissolved.

Heather Roach, chair of NSAB, said: "When vulnerable patients are placed in hospitals like Milestones, it's vital that our whole system works together to keep them safe. This review has shown that there are gaps in the monitoring of private provision, particularly when patients are placed in Norfolk from out of our county."

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Source: BBC News (25 August 2022)

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No new London hospitals until at least 2027

Two new London hospitals will not open until 2027 at the earliest, the BBC has been told.

In 2019, the government pledged to build a new hospital in Sutton and another at Whipps Cross in east London. The St Helier complex in Sutton in south London dates back to the 1930s and much of the Epsom site is about 40 years old.

But Dr Ruth Charlton, chief medical officer at Epsom and St Helier Hospital, said: "Our working conditions... are not fit for 21st century healthcare. We really feel that our patients and or staff deserve facilities that would allow them to deliver the quality of healthcare that we all wish to receive."

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "We have committed to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030, backed by an initial £3.7bn. We are working closely with all the schemes in the programme and providing funding to develop their plans - final funding allocations are only confirmed once business cases have been fully reviewed and agreed. By taking a more centralised approach, we will reduce the overall time taken to build the hospitals and provide better value for money for the taxpayer."

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Source: BBC News (25 August 2022)

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NHS and care homes in England to pause routine Covid testing

Most hospital patients and care home residents in England will no longer be tested for Covid unless they have symptoms, the government has said.

From 31 August, NHS and social care staff will also not be offered lateral flow tests unless they fall sick. Free testing for the general public ended in April in England, but continued in some high-risk settings.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: "This reflects the fact case rates have fallen and the risk of transmission has reduced, though we will continue to closely monitor the situation and work with sectors to resume testing should it be needed."

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Source: BBC News (25 August 2022)

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Trust criticised for ‘extreme positivity’ and drops two ratings to ‘inadequate’

Senior leaders of an ambulance trust have been told their ‘extreme positivity’ has made them appear ‘out of touch’ as the Care Quality Commission downgraded the organisation’s rating to ‘inadequate’.

The health watchdog has dropped the overall rating of South Central Ambulance Service Foundation Trust, as well as the provider’s ratings for safety, leadership and for its urgent and emergency care services, from “good” to “inadequate”.

The CQC has served SCAS with a warning notice and has criticised the trust’s board for its “extreme positivity about its performance”, which “could feel dismissive of the reality to frontline staff.” The regulator also said it saw evidence “of executive leaders attempting to discredit people raising valid concerns” and was told that serious concerns including sexual harassment had been “brushed under the carpet”.

The CQC, which published the report today, also said there was “no evidence” of action being considered by SCAS to manage risk for patients suffering long handover delays outside A&E departments, and that serious issues “had not been addressed internally”.

Will Hancock, chief executive of SCAS, said the trust had an “extensive improvement plan” and is “committed to making things better”.

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Source: HSJ (25 August 2022)

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Polio was almost eradicated. This year it staged a comeback

At the beginning of this year, there was a thrum of excitement among global health experts: Eradication of polio, a centuries-old foe that has paralyzed legions of children around the globe, seemed tantalizingly close.

But there were several ominous setbacks.

Malawi in February announced its first case in 30 years, a 3-year-old girl who became paralyzed following infection with a virus that appeared to be from Pakistan. Pakistan itself went on to report 14 cases, eight of them in a single month this spring. In March, Israel reported its first case since 1988. Then, in June, British authorities declared an “incident of national concern” when they discovered the virus in sewage. By the time New York City detected the virus in wastewater last week, polio eradication seemed as elusive as ever.

“It’s a poignant and stark reminder that polio-free countries are not really polio-risk free,” said Dr. Ananda Bandyopadhyay, deputy director for polio at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest supporter of polio eradication efforts. The virus is always “a plane ride away,” he added.

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Source: The New York Times (18 August 2022)

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Alarm over Liz Truss raid on NHS

Hospital bosses have warned that they face “impossible choices” under Liz Truss’s plan to divert £10 billion a year from the NHS to social care.

They say that her pledge to remove cash earmarked for the health service will “slam the brakes” on efforts to tackle record waiting lists, with patients bearing the brunt.

An extra £36 billion has been ring-fenced for health and care spending over the next three years, of which less than £2 billion a year is due to go towards social care. Truss, the frontrunner in the Conservative leadership contest, has announced that as prime minister she will divert the entire amount to local authorities to pay for older people’s care. This would create a £10 billion shortfall in annual NHS spending, the equivalent of imposing a 7 per cent budget cut on the service.

NHS bosses say that they would have no choice but to cut services as they face the worst winter crisis in living memory, forcing patients to wait longer for treatment. There are already 6.7 million people on waiting lists, while patients are dying because of a sharp increase in ambulance response times and accident and emergency waiting times are the worst on record.

Truss told a Times Radio hustings: “I still would spend the money. I would just take it out of general taxation rather than raising national insurance. But I would spend that money in social care. Quite a lot has gone to the NHS. I would give it to local authorities.”

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Source: The Times (25 August 2022)

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Minnesota nurses’ strike vote puts safety and conditions in spotlight

Nurses at 15 hospitals in the Twin Cities area (Minneapolis-St Paul) and Duluth, Minnesota, that are negotiating new union contracts with their respective hospitals have overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. A date for the work stoppage has not been set yet by the union, the Minnesota Nurses Association, which represents about 15,000 nurses who voted on the strike authorization, but a 10-day notice must be given ahead of any strike.

If a strike is carried out, it would be one of the largest nurses’ strikes in US history.

Jayme Wicklund, a registered nurse at the Children’s hospital in St Paul, Minnesota, and member of the negotiating committee, said, “We need more resources to take care of the patients. The hospitals are very focused on wages. We have to be comparable to other places. But that’s all that they focus on. Once you start talking about wages, they don’t want to talk about the other important issues around patient safety or actually, other ways to save money.”

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Source: The Guardian (23 August 2022)

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Sunak says it was a mistake to ‘empower scientists’ during Covid pandemic

Rishi Sunak has claimed that it was a mistake to “empower scientists” during the coronavirus pandemic and that his opposition to closing schools was met with silence during one meeting.

The Conservative leadership candidate believes one of the major errors was allowing the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) to have so much influence on decision making such as closing nurseries, schools and colleges in March 2020.

Sunak also disclosed that he was banned from discussing the “trade-offs” of imposing coronavirus-related restrictions such as missed doctor’s appointments and NHS waiting list backlogs.

In an interview with the Spectator to be published on Saturday, the former chancellor said: “We shouldn’t have empowered the scientists in the way we did. And you have to acknowledge trade-offs from the beginning. “If we’d done all of that, we could be in a very different place. We’d probably have made different decisions on things like schools.”

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Source: The Guardian (24 August 2022)

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NHS forced to publish hidden trolley wait data by UK regulator

The NHS has been forced to publish hidden trolley waits data, after intervention by the UK Statistics Authority, The Independent has learned.

In a letter to NHS Digital and NHS England in July, Ed Humpherson director general for regulation at UKSA asked the organisations to publish monthly data on patients whose total wait in A&E is longer than 12 hours, following an ongoing row with emergency care leaders.

NHS England promised to publish this internal data but has yet to comply, and as a result it was referred to UKSA by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine over concerns that the public data is misleading.

Dr Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told The Independent: “For some time, we have been calling for NHS England to publish the 12-hour data measured from time of arrival. This data will show the real scale and depth of the crisis that urgent and emergency care is facing. We believe that through transparency around the sheer number of patients facing 12-hour waits, we can drive political and health leaders into action.

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Source: The Independent (25 August 2022)

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Patients taken to hospital in fire engines as firefighters respond to rocketing medical calls

Firefighters have resorted to taking people to hospital in fire engines amid rocketing call-outs to medical emergencies.

Fire and rescue services now respond to more “non-fire incidents” than fires in England, including cardiac arrests, suicide attempts and elderly people trapped in their homes after falls.

Official statistics show that they attended more than 18,200 medical incidents in 2021-22, an increase of a third from the previous year, and that firefighters rather than ambulances were the “first responder” in almost half of those calls.

Chris Lowther, who chairs the National Fire Chiefs’ Council’s operations committee, said the figures showed a “new reality” as firefighters step in to help struggling ambulance services.

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Source: The Independent (22 August 2022)

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Aishwarya Aswath's parents say Perth Children's Hospital staff ignored their pleas for help as daughter was dying

The mother of a seven-year-old girl who died at Perth Children's Hospital says she pleaded with staff to help her daughter but was not taken seriously.

Aishwarya Aswath died in April last year after attending the Perth Children's Hospital (PCH) with a high temperature and cold hands.

The Perth Coroner's Court on Wednesday heard a statement from Aishwarya's mother Prasitha Sasidharan, who described how she grew increasingly worried about her daughter while in the hospital waiting room. She approached staff five times while they were in the waiting room for almost two hours. "I feel like I was ignored and not taken seriously," she said. The court heard from both parents on Wednesday, the start of an eight-day inquest. After Aishwarya died her father wanted to hold her but was only allowed to do so for a brief time. In his statement, read to the court, he said there were "many missed opportunities to save her."

Former PCH chief executive Aresh Anwar said the hospital was grappling with a rise in mental health presentations and a shortage of staff when Aishwarya died.

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Source: ABC News (24 August 2022)

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