ANOTHER TRIUMPH OF BRITISH PUBLIC MEDICINE

And the last sentence below gives the lie to the BS

A hospital has apologised after a woman found maggots crawling on her mother's face in its intensive care unit. Nyree Ellison Anjos alerted staff at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, Gloucester, when she saw the maggots near a feeding tube attached to her mother's nose. Mrs Ellison Anjos's mother, Christine Ellison, 59, died two days later from a separate illness. The family said it was satisfied the maggots had no bearing on the death in July.

Ellison Anjos, 34, from Gloucester, said she had chosen to speak out in the hope that maggots would not be found on another patient. She said: "We saw there was a fly flying around there. The next day I went there and there was this yellow thing by her tube. She kept touching her nose and fiddling with it and we could see it was bothering her. I had a close look and could see little maggots moving in there."

Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: "We would like to offer our sincere apologies to the family of Mrs Ellison for any distress caused by this incident. "We can confirm that a very small number of maggots, each the size of a pinhead, were found. "The incident was incredibly rare and we took immediate steps to prevent it from happening again. "We have always been commended for our high standards of cleanliness and hygiene. It is important to remember that this particular incident is an isolated and rare occurrence and at no time was Mrs Ellison's treatment compromised."

The same hospital was criticised in October this year after one of its treatment rooms had to be fumigated after maggots were found on a discarded sandwich.

Source

***************************

For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here, the mirror site may be more up to date. My Home Page is here or here.

***************************