The mesh fightback begins: How thousands of women are being left in agony on waiting lists

"What has happened to us is home-grown, institutionalised female genital mutilation," says Mary Lodato, 63, a mother of three and a university researcher, from Kettering in Northamptonshire.

"It has been a systemic failure in health and care and it was totally avoidable."

What Mary is referring to are complications due to implanted surgical mesh, designed to treat post-childbirth pelvic damage in women, which has left thousands effectively crippled as the material disintegrated inside their bodies, and sheared into the tissue, causing a range of devastating symptoms including pain, difficulty walking and sexual dysfunction.

An eight-year Good Health campaign to get official recognition of the problem led to the establishment of a government inquiry under the leadership of former Conservative health minister Baroness Julia Cumberlege.

Although the inquiry report was published in July 2020, some of its key recommendations have still not been implemented, leaving thousands of women suffering and not getting the help they need.

Seven specialist NHS mesh removal clinics were meant to open in April this year in London, Cambridge, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Leicester. But the affected women claim a shortage of specialists has meant that only two are functioning — at University College London Hospital and Southmead Hospital in Bristol (which was not on the original list).

They also say that it's extremely difficult to get a referral to one of these new centres and even if they do, waiting times can stretch into years.

"To the doctors who originally treated us, these operations weren't anything major — but to us it was a catastrophically painful loss of work, family life and intimacy," says Mary. 

Mary's story is one familiar to almost 10,000 women who have joined an anti-mesh group called Sling the Mesh, and a number of other support organisations.

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Source: Mail Online, 1 November 2021

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