Jump to content

Search the hub

Showing results for tags 'Patient death'.

More search options

  • Search By Tags

    Start to type the tag you want to use, then select from the list.

  • Search By Author

Content Type


Forums

  • All
    • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Culture
    • Improving patient safety
    • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Leadership for patient safety
    • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Patient engagement
    • Patient safety in health and care
    • Patient Safety Learning
    • Professionalising patient safety
    • Research, data and insight
    • Miscellaneous

Categories

  • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Commissioning and funding patient safety
    • Digital health and care service provision
    • Health records and plans
    • Innovation programmes in health and care
    • Climate change/sustainability
  • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Blogs
    • Data, research and statistics
    • Frontline insights during the pandemic
    • Good practice and useful resources
    • Guidance
    • Mental health
    • Exit strategies
    • Patient recovery
    • Questions around Government governance
  • Culture
    • Bullying and fear
    • Good practice
    • Occupational health and safety
    • Safety culture programmes
    • Second victim
    • Speak Up Guardians
    • Staff safety
    • Whistle blowing
  • Improving patient safety
    • Clinical governance and audits
    • Design for safety
    • Disasters averted/near misses
    • Equipment and facilities
    • Error traps
    • Health inequalities
    • Human factors (improving human performance in care delivery)
    • Improving systems of care
    • Implementation of improvements
    • International development and humanitarian
    • Safety stories
    • Stories from the front line
    • Workforce and resources
  • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Investigations and complaints
    • Risk management and legal issues
  • Leadership for patient safety
    • Business case for patient safety
    • Boards
    • Clinical leadership
    • Exec teams
    • Inquiries
    • International reports
    • National/Governmental
    • Patient Safety Commissioner
    • Quality and safety reports
    • Techniques
    • Other
  • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Government and ALB direction and guidance
    • International patient safety
    • Regulators and their regulations
  • Patient engagement
    • Consent and privacy
    • Harmed care patient pathways/post-incident pathways
    • How to engage for patient safety
    • Keeping patients safe
    • Patient-centred care
    • Patient Safety Partners
    • Patient stories
  • Patient safety in health and care
    • Care settings
    • Conditions
    • Diagnosis
    • High risk areas
    • Learning disabilities
    • Medication
    • Mental health
    • Men's health
    • Patient management
    • Social care
    • Transitions of care
    • Women's health
  • Patient Safety Learning
    • Patient Safety Learning campaigns
    • Patient Safety Learning documents
    • Patient Safety Standards
    • 2-minute Tuesdays
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2018
    • Patient Safety Learning Awards 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Interviews
    • Patient Safety Learning webinars
  • Professionalising patient safety
    • Accreditation for patient safety
    • Competency framework
    • Medical students
    • Patient safety standards
    • Training & education
  • Research, data and insight
    • Data and insight
    • Research
  • Miscellaneous

News

  • News

Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start
    End

Last updated

  • Start
    End

Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End

Group

First name

Last name

Country

Join a private group (if appropriate)

About me

Organisation

Role

Found 1,489 results
  1. News Article
    More than 120,000 people in England died last year while on the NHS waiting list for hospital treatment, figures obtained by Labour appear to show. That would be a record high number of such deaths, and is double the 60,000 patients who died in 2017/18. For example, the Royal Free hospital in London said it had had 3,615 such deaths, while there were 2,888 at the Morecambe Bay trust in Cumbria and 2,039 at Leeds teaching hospitals trust. Hospital bosses said the deaths highlighted the dangers of patients having to endure long waits for care and reflected a “decade of underinvestment” that had left the NHS with too few staff and beds. Healthwatch England, a patient advocacy group that scrutinises NHS performance, said the number of people dying while waiting for care was “a national tragedy”. Louise Ansari, the chief executive, said: “We know that delays to care have significant impacts on people’s lives, putting many in danger.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 31 August 2023
  2. News Article
    The cost of living squeeze is a significant factor in some stillbirths, according to case reviews carried out in one of England’s most deprived areas. The review was undertaken in Bradford last year, and concluded: ”the current financial crisis is impacting on the ability of some women to attend essential antenatal appointments”. Missing these appointments was a factor in a range of maternity safety events, including stillbirths, it said. The researchers are now calling for new national funding to help ensure expectant parents do not miss important appointments because they cannot afford to attend. The research findings include: ‘Did not attend’ rates increased due to lack of funds for transport to antenatal appointments; “Lack of credit on phones prevented communication between women and maternity services, for example, making [them] unable to rearrange scans or appointments”; Wide spread incidence of “digital poverty, [for example] a lady with type 1 [diabetes] was unable to monitor her glycaemic control over night due to only having one phone charger in the house”; and “Families with babies on a neonatal unit going without food in order to finance transport to and from the unit.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 25 August 2023
  3. News Article
    A critical report into how a mental health trust mismanaged its mortality figures was edited to remove criticism of its leadership, the BBC has found. In June, auditors Grant Thornton revealed how the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) had lost track of patient deaths. But earlier drafts included language around governance failures that were missing in the final version. NSFT and Grant Thornton said the changes were due to fact-checking. A number of drafts of the report were produced, with the first dated 23 February this year. The first version described "poor governance" in the way deaths data was managed, with governance also being called "weak" and "inadequate". But many of these critical words were missing from the report released to the public, with "governance" also being replaced with "controls", according to leaked documents. After losing her son Tim in 2014, Caroline Aldridge has been highlighting what she and others claimed had been the trust's undercounting of deaths. "I think people need to know what was removed and what was changed, because I suspect that the first report is a lot nearer to the truth," she said. Ms Aldridge added: "It takes all responsibility from governance, removing the words 'inadequate', 'poor', 'weak' governance, removing significant pieces of information that's not factual accuracy. "We cannot have people watering it [the report] down when it's about deaths." Read full story Source: BBC News, 29 August 2023
  4. News Article
    The United States is in the middle of a maternal health crisis. Today, a woman in the US is twice as likely to die from pregnancy than her mother was a generation ago. Statistics from the World Health Organization show the United States has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the developed world. Women in the US are 10 or more times likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than mothers in Poland, Spain or Norway. Some of the worst statistics come out of the South - in places like Louisiana, where deep pockets of poverty, health care deserts and racial biases have long put mothers at risk. Dr Rebekah Gee: The state of maternal health in the United States is abysmal. And Louisiana is the highest maternal mortality in the US. So, in the developed world, Louisiana has the worst outcomes for women having babies." A third of Louisiana's parishes are maternal health deserts – meaning they don't have a single OB-GYN, leaving more than 51 thousand women in the state without easy access to care and three times more likely to die of pregnancy related causes. Read full story Source: CBS News, 20 August 2023
  5. News Article
    Lucy Letby sat with her parents in a meeting with senior managers at the Countess of Chester Hospital, where she worked, waiting patiently for an apology. She had prepared a statement that was read out by her parents to Tony Chambers, the hospital’s chief executive, about being bullied and victimised on the neonatal unit. It was December 22, 2016, and for the previous 18 months, two doctors on the unit had been trying to find an answer for a series of mysterious deaths of babies. Their detective work had led them to a single common denominator: Letby. The neonatal nurse had been on shift for each of the incidents. Rumours of a killer on the ward had spread and Letby had complained about the doctors and their finger-pointing, claiming she was being wrongly blamed. Chambers, who had trained as a nurse, was convinced by Letby’s account, and in front of her parents, John and Susan, offered sincere apologies on behalf of the hospital trust. The doctors in question would be “dealt with’’. Except the doctors were right. By that point Letby had secretly murdered seven babies and tried to kill six more, one of them twice. An investigation by The Sunday Times, based on a cache of internal documents, reveals in detail how the hospital delayed calling the police for months and that senior management, including the board, sided with Letby against doctors after commissioning perfunctory investigations. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 19 August 2023
  6. News Article
    In September last year, Ebrima Sajnia watched helplessly as his young son slowly died in front of his eyes. Mr Sajnia says three-year-old Lamin was set to start attending nursery school in a few weeks when he got a fever. A doctor at a local clinic prescribed medicines, including a cough syrup. Over the next few days, Lamin's condition deteriorated as he struggled to eat and even urinate. He was admitted to a hospital, where doctors detected kidney issues. Within seven days, Lamin was dead. He was among around 70 children - younger than five - who died in The Gambia of acute kidney injuries between July and October last year after consuming one of four cough syrups made by an Indian company called Maiden Pharmaceuticals. In October, the World Health Organization (WHO) linked the deaths to the syrups, saying it had found "unacceptable" levels of toxins in the medicines. A Gambian parliamentary panel also concluded after investigations that the deaths were the result of the children ingesting the syrups. Both Maiden Pharmaceuticals and the Indian government have denied this - India said in December that the syrups complied with quality standards when tested domestically. It's an assessment that Amadou Camara, chairperson of the Gambian panel that investigated the deaths, strongly disagrees with. "We have evidence. We tested these drugs. [They] contained unacceptable amounts of ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol, and these were directly imported from India, manufactured by Maiden," he says. Ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol are toxic to humans and could be fatal if consumed". Read full story Source: BBC News, 21 August 2023
  7. News Article
    More than 3,000 patients have died following incidents in the Irish health service since 2018, new data shows. New HSE data shows more than 480,000 incidents potentially causing harm were recorded across hospitals and community healthcare groups since 2018. These include falls, attacks on patients or staff, problems with medication, treating the wrong limb, or reactions to medical devices, among other issues. Last year’s total of 106,967 was the highest of five years recorded, up from 94,422 in 2018. While around half the incidents annually led to no injury, last year 0.65% or 556 led to a death. That stood at 0.59% or 557 deaths in 2018. A spokesperson for the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said the figures are very high, but not surprising. “Hospitals are not supposed to be dangerous places," she said. "No matter how highly skilled your staff are, patient safety issues and the risk of missed care incidents are inevitable in a situation where patients are lining corridors on trolleys and there aren’t enough staff to care for them." Read full story Source: Irish Examiner, 18 August 2023
  8. News Article
    Nurse Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies on a neonatal unit, making her the UK's most prolific child serial killer in modern times. The 33-year-old has also been convicted of trying to kill six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016. Letby deliberately injected babies with air, force fed others milk and poisoned two of the infants with insulin. Commenting on the verdict, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Rob Behrens said: “We know that, in general, people work in the health service because they want to help and that when things go wrong it is not intentional. At the same time, and too often we see the commitment to public safety in the NHS undone by a defensive leadership culture across the NHS. “The Lucy Letby story is different and almost without parallel, because it reveals an intent to harm by one individual. As such, it is one of the darkest crimes ever committed in our health service. Our first thoughts are with the families of the children who died. “However, we also heard throughout the trial, evidence from clinicians that they repeatedly raised concerns and called for action. It seems that nobody listened and nothing happened. More babies were harmed and more babies were killed. Those who lost their children deserve to know whether Letby could have been stopped and how it was that doctors were not listened to and their concerns not addressed for so long. Patients and staff alike deserve an NHS that values accountability, transparency, and a willingness to learn. “Good leadership always listens, especially when it’s about patient safety. Poor leadership makes it difficult for people to raise concerns when things go wrong, even though complaints are vital for patient safety and to stop mistakes being repeated. We need to see significant improvements to culture and leadership across the NHS so that the voices of staff and patients can be heard, both with regard to everyday pressures and mistakes and, very exceptionally, when there are warnings of real evil.”
  9. News Article
    A man died after A&E doctors sent him home from hospital and “told him to drink Lucozade” despite him vomiting 100 times in 24 hours. Nick Rousseau died from an undiagnosed blocked bowel in 2019 after doctors at Milton Keynes Hospital failed to spot that he had the life-threatening condition. The 47-year-old was sent home twice in three days and reassured he “would be alright” as doctors believed he had gastroenteritis, his “devastated” wife Kimberly White said. But Mr Rousseau was actually suffering from an ischaemic bowel, a condition which blocks the arteries to the bowel. He had been to see his doctors several times and had lost three stones in weight over two years due to vomiting and diarrhoea but was never diagnosed. His family, represented by Osbornes Law, received a six-figure payout in June from Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. While it did not admit negligence, it accepted that there were features of Mr Rousseau’s illness which could have justified admission, inpatient observation, and further tests, which could have given a definitive diagnosis. Read full story Source: The Independent, 4 August 2023
  10. News Article
    Trusts have been told to check the safety of their helipads after an accident in a hospital car park left a pensioner dead. Jean Langan, 87, was blown over by the “downwash” of air from a helicopter at Derriford Hospital last year. She was walking through a car park at the hospital after an appointment when she fell and hit her head as an HM Coastguard helicopter landed on the hospital’s helipad. Another elderly woman broke her pelvis. Now the Health and Safety Executive has written to trust chief executives reminding them of their duty to manage health and safety risks around helipads. These risks include downwash from helicopters, the moving parts of helicopters, and the design and location of helipads. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 2 August 2023
  11. News Article
    Serious systemic failings contributed to the death of a newborn baby in a cell at Europe’s largest women’s prison, a coroner has concluded. Rianna Cleary, who was 18 at the time, gave birth to her daughter Aisha alone in her prison cell at HMP Bronzefield, in Surrey, on the night of 26 September 2019. The care-leaver was on remand awaiting sentence after pleading guilty to a robbery charge. The inquest into the baby’s death heard that Cleary’s calls for help when she was in labour were ignored, she was left alone in her cell for 12 hours and bit through the umbilical cord to cut it. In a devastating witness statement read to the court, Cleary described going into labour alone as “the worst and most terrifying and degrading experience of my life”. She said: “I didn’t know when I was due to give birth. I was in really serious pain. I went to the buzzer and asked for a nurse or an ambulance twice.” Cleary passed out and when she woke up she had given birth. The senior coroner for Surrey, Richard Travers, said Aisha “arrived into the world in the most harrowing of circumstances”. He concluded it was “unascertained” whether she was born alive and died shortly after or was stillborn. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 28 July 2023
  12. News Article
    Britain’s health regulator has partly suspended the manufacturing licence of Sciensus, a private company paid millions by the NHS to provide vital medicines, after the death of a cancer patient who was given the wrong dose of chemotherapy. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said it had taken “immediate” action under regulation 28 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 law “where it appears to the MHRA that in the interests of safety the licence should be suspended”. The MHRA found “significant deficiencies” in standards at Sciensus during an investigation triggered by the death of one patient and the hospitalisation of three others. All four patients were administered “incorrect” doses of an unlicensed version of cabazitaxel, a licensed chemotherapy used to treat prostate cancer, according to people familiar with the matter. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 25 July 2023
  13. News Article
    The deaths of dozens of people who took their own lives while patients of an NHS trust will be reviewed after concerns were raised. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) will review all 63 suicides since 2017. It comes after the trust was accused of adding to the records of Charles Ndhlovu, 33, the day after he took his own life to "correct their mistakes". Mr Ndhlovu, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and substance misuse, had been under CPFT's care for two months when he died in Ely in 2017. Last month, his mother Angelina Pattison, from Newmarket, Suffolk, told the BBC his care plan "was done when he died - when they were running around to correct their mistakes, which they have done". Read full story Source: BBC News, 25 July 2023
  14. News Article
    An ambulance trust accused of hiding information from a coroner about patients that died is keeping a damning internal report about the deaths secret, the Guardian can reveal. A consultant paramedic implicated in the alleged cover-ups continues to be involved in decisions to keep the report from the public. Earlier this month, North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) apologised to relatives after a review into claims it covered up errors by paramedics and withheld evidence from the local coroner about the deceased patients. But a bereaved family left in the dark about mistakes made before their daughter’s death have rejected the apology. Now, it has emerged that a 2020 internal interim report on the alleged cover-up continues to be kept secret by the trust. The damning report by consultants AuditOne has been leaked to the Guardian after first being exposed by the Sunday Times. Paul Aitken-Fell, a consultant paramedic blamed in the report for amending information sent to the coroner and removing crucial passages about mistakes by the trust’s paramedics, remains in post. He also holds the gatekeeper role of FoI review officer, and as such has endorsed decisions to refuse to release the report to members of the public who ask for it. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 July 2023
  15. News Article
    America is facing an intensified push to pass stalled federal legislation to address the US’s alarming maternal mortality rates and glaring racial disparities which have led to especially soaring death rates among Black women giving birth. Maternal mortality rates in the US far outpace rates in other industrialised nations, with rates more than double those of countries such as France, Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany. Moms in the US are dying at the highest rates in the developed world. Overall maternal mortality rates in the US spiked during the pandemic. Maternal deaths in the US rose 40% from 861 in 2020 to 1,205 in 2021, a rate of 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births. For Black women, these maternal mortality rates were significantly higher, at 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021. These racial disparities in maternal health outcomes have persisted and worsened for years as the number of women who die giving birth in the US has more than doubled in the last two decades. The CDC noted in a review of maternal mortalities in the US from 2017 to 2019, that 84% of the recorded maternal deaths were preventable. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 July 2023
  16. News Article
    Women who lose babies during pregnancy will be able to get a certificate as an official recognition of their loss as well as better collection and storage of remains under new government plans. The government will make sure the certificate is available to anyone who requests one after experiencing any loss pre-24 weeks’ gestation. The NHS will develop and deliver a sensitive receptacle to collect baby loss remains when a person miscarries. A&Es will also have to ensure that cold storage facilities are available to receive and store remains or pregnancy tissue 24/7 so that women don’t have to resort to storing them in their home refrigerators. The new recommendations are part of the government’s response to the independent Pregnancy Loss Review. Read full story Source: The Independent, 23 July 2023
  17. News Article
    The bodies of people who died with Covid were treated like "toxic waste" and families were left in shock, a bereaved woman has told the inquiry. Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees said her father Ian died "gasping for breath" after catching the virus while in hospital. Ms Marsh-Rees, who leads Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru, said he was "zipped away", and his belongings put in a Tesco carrier bag. Ian Marsh-Rees died after catching the virus while in hospital, aged 85. His daughter said finding information regarding his care in hospital and how he became infected was "almost like an Agatha Christie mystery". She said no GP ever suggested he might have Covid, although she now knows his discharge notes said he had been exposed to Covid. "It wasn't until we saw his notes some months later that we saw the DNA CPR (do not attempt CPR) placed on him, and this was without consultation with us," she said. "It kind of haunts us all that… people used to say 'well they're in the right place' when they go to hospital. I'm not sure they would say that any more," Ms Marsh-Rees said. She now wants to change the way deaths are handled by health boards. She said it was important to prepare families before and support them after the death of a loved one, from palliative care to dignity in death. Read full story Source: BBC News, 18 July 2023
  18. News Article
    A coroner has criticised an NHS trust over the deaths of two new mothers with herpes. Kimberley Sampson, 29, and Samantha Mulcahy, 32, died in 2018 after having caesarean sections six weeks apart by the same surgeon at hospitals in Kent. Their families have been waiting five years for answers on how they came to be infected with the virus, which can cause sores around the mouth or genitals. Catherine Wood, Mid Kent and Medway coroner, said Sampson could have been given an anti-viral treatment sooner. Wood added that in Mulcahy’s case “suspicion should have been raised” given the knowledge among staff from Sampson’s earlier death. The coroner ruled out human culpability of any of the medical staff involved in the case and said it was “unlikely” for the surgeon to be the cause of the herpes infection found in both women. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 July 2023
  19. News Article
    More families have been told by a health board that their relatives' deaths may have been linked to treatment by vascular services. Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) has written to families who were part of a review after concerns were raised last year. Four cases had already been reported to a coroner and the health board says it has been "very open" with relatives of other patients. The service has recently been described by inspectors as making "satisfactory progress", but the health board admit it is still on a "long journey". A report by the Royal College of Surgeons England (RCSE) in January 2022 found risks to patient safety due, in part, to poor record keeping. It recommended to the health board that it investigate fully what happened to the 47 patients its report focused on. Read full story Source: BBC News, 13 July 2023
  20. News Article
    Black women in the Americas bear a heavier burden of maternal mortality than their peers, but according to a report released Wednesday by the United Nations, the gap between who lives and who dies is especially wide in the world’s richest nation — the United States. Of the region’s 35 countries, only four publish comparable maternal mortality data by race, according to the report, which analyzed the maternal health of women and girls of African descent in the Americas: Brazil, Colombia, Suriname and the United States. And while the United States had the lowest overall maternal mortality rate among those four nations, the report said Black women and girls were three times more likely than their U.S. peers to die while giving birth or in the six weeks afterward. “The risk factor is racism,” said Joia Crear-Perry, an OB/GYN and founder of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, a nonprofit group dedicated to eliminating racial inequities in birth outcomes and one of the report’s co-sponsors. “This report drives this home over and over. When your pain is ignored, when your blood pressure is ignored, you die, and that happens across the Americas.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Washington Post, 12 July 2023
  21. News Article
    Olly Vickers died of a brain injury in February last year just weeks after two midwives at Royal Bolton Hospital let his mother Emma Clark feed him while she was having gas and air – in breach of guidelines. Despite being well when he was born, Olly was found “pale and floppy” hours later due to his airways being obstructed. He developed a brain injury and died five months later. Coroner Peter Sigee ruled his death was a result of “neglect” and due to a “gross failure to provide basic medical care”. An inquest into his death heard a student midwife placed a pillow under his mother’s arm while she was feeding him, “contrary to accepted practice”. Another midwife then gave Ms Clark gas and air while she was feeding Olly as she was stitched up for a tear obtained during labour – which again went against guidance. No risk assessment was carried out and the coroner said Olly’s breastfeeding should have been stopped before the midwives began to suture Ms Clark. Read full story Source: The Independent, 8 July 2023
  22. News Article
    A review into failings in maternity care in hospitals in Nottingham is set to become the largest in the UK, the BBC understands. Donna Ockenden, chair of the inquiry, is expected to announce that 1,700 families' cases will be examined. She was in charge of the probe into services in Shropshire, which found at least 201 babies and mothers might have survived had they received better care. The review comes after dozens of baby deaths and injuries in Nottingham and focuses on the maternity units at the Queen's Medical Centre and City Hospital. So far, 1,266 families have contacted the review team themselves directly and to date, 674 of these have given consent to join it. But Ms Ockenden has called for a "radical review" to ensure "women from all communities" were being contacted by the trust and "felt confident" to come forward. Read full story Source: BBC News, 10 July 2023
  23. News Article
    A growing number of disadvantaged and vulnerable women living in one of the poorest parts of England are dying prematurely because public services are not meeting their needs, according to a report. Research published on Monday calculates that in 2021, a woman in the north-east of England was 1.7 times more likely to die early as a result of suicide, addiction or domestic murder than women living in England and Wales as a whole. Laura McIntyre, the head of women and children’s services at Changing Lives, described the report as shocking. “But I’m more saddened,” she said. “To not reach your 40th birthday is just not right.” The report says the reasons for early and avoidable deaths are complicated, involving a patchwork of unaddressed issues including domestic abuse, debt, poverty, mental and physical ill-health, alcohol and substance misuse, and housing problems. But the conclusions are striking. “Put plainly, women living in the north-east are more likely to live shorter lives, to spend a larger proportion of time living in poor health and to die prematurely from preventable diseases,” the report states. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 10 July 2023
  24. News Article
    A cancer patient has died and three others have been hospitalised after they were administered unlicensed versions of chemotherapy by Sciensus, a private company paid millions by the NHS to provide essential medication. Three health regulators have launched inquiries into the incident, according to people familiar with the matter. It was caused by an issue at the firm’s medicines manufacturing unit. In a statement, Sciensus confirmed an “isolated incident” had “affected four patients” and that it was “deeply saddened” that one of them had died. Sciensus offered its “sincere condolences” to the family and friends of the patient who died, and is conducting a thorough investigation, it added. The four patients received unlicensed versions of cabazitaxel, a licensed chemotherapy used to treat prostate cancer. The versions administered to the patients differed from the licensed product and therefore were considered unlicensed medicines. Sciensus is required to comply with official standards to ensure the quality of the products it produces and the protection of public health. Breaches of these standards can result in the MHRA suspending or removing a company’s licence. “Patient safety is our highest priority,” said Dr Alison Cave, the MHRA’s chief safety officer. “We are urgently investigating this issue and we will take any necessary regulatory measures to ensure patients are protected." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 7 July 2023
  25. News Article
    Maternal mortality rates have doubled in the US over the last two decades - with deaths highest among black mothers, a new study suggests. American Indian and Alaska Native women saw the greatest increase, the study in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) said. Southern states had the highest maternal death rates across all race and ethnicity groups, the study found. In 1999, there were an estimated 12.7 deaths per 100,000 live births and in 2019 that figure rose to 32.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019, according to the research, which did not study data from the pandemic years. Unlike other studies, this one examined disparities within states instead of measuring rates at the national level, and it monitored five racial and ethnic groups. Dr Allison Bryant, one of the study's authors, said the findings were a call to action "to understand that some of it is about health care and access to health care, but a lot of it is about structural racism". She said some current policies and procedures "may keep people from being healthy". Read full story Source: BBC News, 4 July 2023
×
×
  • Create New...