MPs back Birmingham widow's NHS battle
Jun 3 2009 by Alison Dayani, Birmingham Post
A Birmingham widow whose husband was killed in a medication overdose by blundering medics has gained national backing in her battle to change the NHS and call for a public inquiry.
Birmingham MPs Andrew Mitchell and Gisela Stuart are supporting Lisa Richards-Everton’s fight for justice along with campaigning group AvMA (Action Against Medical Accidents).
Mother-of-three Lisa’s husband Paul Richards and fellow cancer patient Baljit Singh Sunner died within hours of each other on Ward 19 at Heartlands Hospital after being wrongly given five times the dose of fungal infection drug Amphotericin in July 2007.
A coroner’s jury this year ruled gross failings and neglect by a junior doctor, two nurses and Heart of England Foundation Trust played a part in the deaths of IT consultant Mr Richards, aged 35, of Sutton Coldfield, and Mr Singh Sunner, aged 36, of Stechford.
Lisa has set up a petition on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s website calling for an urgent review of how high-risk drugs are managed in hospitals and for a new standard protocol to prevent further deaths from drug errors.
Her petition has already attracted more than 200 signatures.
“Andrew Mitchell and Gisela Stuart have offered their support and Mr Mitchell is writing to Health Secretary Alan Johnson to highlight the issue and ask for a public inquiry,” Lisa, of Signal Hayes Road, Walmley, said. “It is hard to accept the fact that the doctor and nurses continue to work while my life and my children’s have been torn apart.
“I have to keep fighting for justice because I cannot forget how incompetence played a huge part in Paul and Baljit’s deaths. I am fighting for changes so that my husband’s death has not been in vain. I am hopeful but I need more support and hope people out there in the Midlands will join me in this fight.”
Gisela Stuart, MP for Edgbaston, said she was backing the petition and urged locals to do the same, and added: “I have already written to Heartlands Hospital to see what has happened since the deaths and I will write to Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a former health minister to draw attention to this petition.”
New junior doctor Dr Kiran Tawana prescribed the Amphotericin which was made up by nurses Vongai Gondo and Catherine Kunasta, and police are investigating whether to bring about criminal charges in relation to errors made.
The petition comes after other drug failings in the NHS including father-of two Stephen Parkins, aged 43, who died of a heart attack after being injected with the wrong drug at Heartlands Hospital, in Bordesley Green, in 2006.
Stephen’s parents Pauline, aged 65, and Stephen, 65, of Chelmsley Wood, discovered the doctor used a muscle-relaxing drug called suxamethonium, which should not have been on the ward, instead of lignocaine. Figures show 40,000 medication mistakes are made in hospitals annually although most cause no harm. About five per cent caused moderate, severe harm or death. A study of 113 hospital units, including 17 in the UK, by the Vienna University team this year found that under stress doctors and nurses made frequent errors injecting intensive care drugs. The 861 errors in total included drugs given at wrong times, the wrong dose and the wrong drug.
