Tragedy of girl, five, struck by swine flu: Three NHS GPs and a hospital doctor thought she had tonsillitis

Diagnostic tests? Never heard of them!

A five-year-old girl suffering from swine flu died after doctors took two weeks to diagnose her illness, it was claimed last night. Nida Qureshi was seen by three GPs and a hospital doctor who told her parents she may have tonsillitis. By the time doctors discovered that she had the H1N1 virus, the youngster was on a life support machine, her family said. She died eight days later.

Last night relatives said Nida's parents - Zubair, 28, and Raheela, 30, who is pregnant with their second child - believe that their daughter may have survived if swine flu had been detected earlier. Nida's uncle, Jawaid Qureshi, said: 'Her mum, herself a child carer, and dad are very angry that doctors and GPs failed to diagnose it earlier. It's devastating. She may have lived if it had been diagnosed earlier.'

Mr Qureshi said Nida - a 'bright' girl without any underlying health problems - fell ill with a temperature and vomiting on October 19. The family phoned a GP, who advised paracetamol. The next day she went to her doctor and was prescribed antibiotics. Five days later, the family took her back but were told to carry on giving the antibiotics. On November 1, after her condition worsened, the family took her to A&E at their local hospital, Wexham Park, in Slough.

Mr Qureshi said: 'When she was breathing she was in agony. She was coughing a lot as well. The doctor at hospital said it might be tonsillitis but they did not take any blood or urine samples. They prescribed her with more medicine and said: "Go back to the GP if she continues not to feel well". It was a very bad decision to allow her to go home.'

Two days later she had a seizure and never regained consciousness. She was put on a life support machine and finally diagnosed with the H1N1 virus. Nida was transferred to St Mary's Hospital in London.

A spokesman for NHS Berkshire East said: 'We can confirm that a young girl from east Berkshire died at St Mary's Hospital, London, on November 11. She had tested positive for H1N1 swine flu.'

Professor John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary School of Medicine, said her death could have been caused when the swine flu virus moved into her central nervous system. Normally, the virus attacks the lungs. But in extremely rare cases, often affecting children, it can attack the nerve tissue and cause a seizure. He added: 'Diagnosing flu in a five-year-old is extremely difficult. It is also impossible to say if Tamiflu would have made any difference in this case.'

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Civility and honesty coming to Britain's National Health Service?

Doctors and nurses should be more honest and open when things go wrong and offer an apology to the patient or their family under new guidance to the NHS. Clinicians are often fearful of saying sorry when a patient has been harmed by a blunder because it may influence any future legal action, but it is the 'right thing to do, the head of the National Patient Safety Agency has said. When patients file complaints or litigation, their aim is often for the people involved to say sorry and to ensure the same thing does not happen to someone else, research has shown.

New guidance, entitled Being Open, has been issued to the NHS highlighting the importance of effective communication with patients. Martin Fletcher, Chief Executive of the NPSA, said: “Being open is the right thing to do. Making a genuine apology to a patient and their family after an error has occurred is a very hard thing to do for any clinician. “Saying sorry and following the principles of Being Open does have other benefits too. It can also enhance an open and fair safety culture and reduce costs associated with complaints and litigation.”

Mr Fletcher added: “Apologising after an incident has happened must not be about blaming others for errors. "Doing so would serve no purpose - it would only drive the issue underground and we would never get to the heart of the problem. This would mean that risks are not identified and future patients have the potential to be harmed in the same way."

The NPSA collects data from the NHS on instances where patients have been harmed or near misses in orderto identify patterns and issue warnings to the rest of the health service so similar problems can be avoided elsewhere.

Mr Fletcher said: “Discussing patient safety incidents promptly, fully and compassionately is the best way to support patients and staff when something does go wrong. Evidence from other countries shows that by following the principles of Being Open, formal complaints and litigation claims can also be reduced.”

Managers in the NHS needed to take the initiative for the principles to succeed he said. Senior clinicians should be identified in each organisation to support doctors and nurses when things go wrong the guidance said.

NHS Medical Director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh said: “Being open with patients should anything go wrong with their healthcare is the right thing to do. Support is vital during what is often a difficult time for both clinicians and patients. "I commend the introduction of senior clinical counsellors to support fellow clinicians.”

Peter Walsh, Chief Executive, Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA), said: “Being open when things going wrong is the most important thing for patients and makes sense from everyone’s point of view. "The Being Open training and materials make it easier to do what must be the hardest job that a health professional has to do.”

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Logrolling in the healthcare vote

What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform? Here’s a case study. On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.” The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.” I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.) Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu. How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.

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Senate, Help Your President -- Deep-Six ObamaCare!

"The political risks of failure are pretty high." A former congressional aide offered this ominous assessment following the House of Representatives' passage of "health care reform." Warning to the Senate: President Obama and his party face political catastrophe if you fail to do your part so that the President can sign a bill! Nonsense.

The political risks of success are much, much higher. Taxes would go up -- and not just on "the rich." And since "the rich" provide jobs, they would hire fewer people, spend less on their businesses, and take fewer risks. Costs would explode beyond government estimates -- which conveniently limit the estimated price tag to only the first decade.

Expect insurance companies to deny requests for medical treatment at a greater rate than today. Why? The bill would require insurers to take people with pre-existing illnesses, so denying requests for treatment would be the only potent weapon to reduce costs. And since those with pre-existing illnesses could not be denied coverage, people would simply wait until they required care before getting insurance -- only to drop it and risk paying fines once they were treated.

Government eventually will start "controlling costs" by rationing care -- denying requests; imposing waiting times for treatment; and withholding treatment from those with "bad" lifestyles (e.g., those who smoke cigarettes or those who fail to exercise and eat "appropriately") and those considered too old to "sufficiently benefit."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, during the Great Depression, launched the New Deal -- a blinding array of expansive and expensive government programs designed to "rescue" the economy. Obama, as did FDR, calls this expansion necessary in order to achieve economic recovery. Government expansion -- in this case, ObamaCare -- and economic prosperity supposedly go hand in hand.

Henry Morgenthau served as FDR's Treasury secretary. Thus Morgenthau, who served from 1934 to 1945, was to FDR what current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is to Obama. Morgenthau wrote in 1939: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt to boot!"

Political Armageddon if ObamaCare fails? No. A recent Rasmussen poll shows more "likely voters" opposed than in favor. Preventing Obama from being Obama is job security for both the President and the congressional Democrats.

The then-Republican-controlled Congress stopped President Bill Clinton from passing HillaryCare. People soon forgot about his "failure" and re-elected him by a larger margin than he received in his first term. Republicans also blocked his first-term attempt to pass a multibillion-dollar "economic stimulus package."

Because of Republican pressure or support, Clinton signed measures unpopular with his base -- the NAFTA and GATT trade agreements; a reduction in capital gains taxes (as part of a larger budget compromise); and 1996's welfare reform act, which, for the first time, refused recipients more money if they had additional children and imposed benefit time limits. Many congressional Democrats opposed these measures.

Though he successfully blamed the Republicans for temporarily shutting down the government over a budget impasse, Clinton signed a budget more modest and less expensive than he wished. For these reasons, among others, Clinton left office with a budget surplus that Democrats constantly brag about -- never, of course, giving Republicans any credit for restraining Clinton's desire to spend.

Besides, if ObamaCare fails in the Senate, watch Obama and the sycophantic media round up the "usual suspects" -- "anti-women" pro-lifers who reject government money for abortions; anti-illegal-alien "racists" who wanted some teeth in the legislation to stop illegal aliens from receiving benefits; "in-the-pockets-of-insurance-company" opponents of the noble "public option" (government-subsidized insurance designed to keep insurance companies "honest"); "evil and greedy" health insurance companies that "misled" the public about the wonders of ObamaCare; "the rich" who selfishly resisted tax hikes; and, of course, Republicans who "failed to offer an alternative."

The media will praise the President for his "heroic" effort, for "going down swinging," for getting the House -- for the first time in history -- to pass health care "reform," for going further than any president since President Harry Truman first proposed government-based universal health care.

After spending trillions to "save" our financial system, signing an $800 billion spending package to "stimulate" the economy, and pushing government takeovers of financial firms, banks and car companies, the President stands -- pen in hand -- ready to enact a dangerous government takeover of one-sixth of the nation's economy.

President Clinton survived -- not in spite of but, in part, because of his "failure" to "reform" health care. Obama will survive -- and benefit -- from this "failure," as well. So, Senate, do the President, yourself and the country a favor. Stop him.

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Obamacare Can Be Stopped: ReverseTheVote.org

Would a member of the House of Representatives vote to pass Obamacare if he or she knew it was going to lead to an electoral loss in November 2010? Even if a "yes" vote on Obamacare significantly increases the likelihood of a loss without guaranteeing it, would a member of the House still throw in with Nancy Pelosi and President Obama? Or would they brave the nasty e-mail from the left and the angry looks from Democratic leadership and vote instead to keep their job by voting in accord with the wishes of their district and thus voting no?

If at least three of the 220 House members who voted yes on Obamacare on November 7 fall into the category of those who would rather survive November 2010 than go down in a rush to single payer, then it will be possible to defeat the bill on its return engagement in the House. Possible, that is, if enough voters indicate to the House members that a yes vote on the government's takeover of health care means a "no" vote on their re-election in 50 weeks.

Which brings us to ReverseTheVote.org, a website launched this week by the National Republican Congressional Committee. ReverseTheVote.org identifies the 24 most vulnerable Democrats who voted for Obamacare, and it asks for contributions that will go into the war chests of the eventual GOP nominees against these 24 incumbents. Every dollar given gets split 24 ways. No money goes into a primary fight between Republicans. Every dollar gets spent to defeat a proponent of Obamacare.

The 24 Democrats who are targeted by ReverseTheVote.org come from across the country --from New Hampshire to Oregon and from New York to Arizona. Each one is listed by name at the web site. Each voted against the wishes of their district, and as serious public opinion shows, against the wishes of clear majorities of Americans.

If cash piles up in the common fund to defeat these two dozen Obamacare proponents, not only will they notice, so too will those Democrats who voted no the first time and are glad they are not on the list. When Democratic whips come round looking for new help to offset any defections, the ReverseTheVote.org list will be on the minds of every Democrat who voted no last time and stayed off the list. So too will the handful of Senate Democrats notice in whose hands Obamacare currently rests. If Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln sees a yes vote for Obamacare become the rallying cry of 2010, will she be more or less likely to vote for cloture when that key vote comes up.

Public opinion swung against Obamacare long ago, which is why the president and his Congressional allies are trying to rush it through now, as far in advance of next year's elections as possible.

But if vulnerable Democrats realize that the public has made up its mind and is now making a list and posting it on the fridge, the momentum behind the ill-conceived and gigantically expensive experiment in socialized medicine will evaporate.

If ReverseTheVote.org collects significant numbers of small donors, Democratic leaders won't be able to tell these 24 Democrats not to worry, that no one will remember this vote come next fall. Opponents of Obamacare have the opportunity to send the loudest message possible, one that even the most tone-deaf Democrat will hear.

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Married couples face extra tax in Senate health care bill

Senate Democrats' health care bill would create a new marriage penalty by imposing a tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but hitting married couples making just $50,000 more.

That's one of 17 new taxes imposed by the bill, which also creates a levy on elective plastic surgery - some call it "botax" - and places a 40 percent excise tax on those who have generous health care plans. "If you have insurance, you get taxed. If you don't have insurance, you get taxed. If you need a life-saving medical device, you get taxed. If you need prescription medicines, you get taxed," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, who is leading the fight against the bill.

The new taxes would be used to fund an expansion of government medical programs and to fund subsidies for lower-income individuals to buy insurance, extending health care coverage to 94 percent of eligible non-elderly Americans.

Democrats said the bill will offer lower health care costs for small businesses and families, and said the new taxes are aimed at upper-income earners, so costs would not go up for the middle class. They said that makes good on President Obama's campaign pledge not to increase taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year, which explains the reason for the new marriage penalty.

"We wanted to make this provision consistent with the president's pledge not to increase taxes on singles making under $200,000 and married couples making under $250,000," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who wrote the Senate bill. "Yes, this structure can create a 'marriage penalty' for some couples. It also creates a 'marriage bonus' for others," he said. "A married couple with one wage earner can earn up to $250,000 without facing this higher tax, whereas a single person in the same job with the same pay would be hit by it."

But a married couple in which each earner makes $150,000 would be hit with the tax, whereas an unmarried couple living together with the same incomes would not.

Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform, said the new marriage penalty comes on top of an existing one that's always been part of the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare. He said when the payroll tax was created to fund Social Security during the New Deal, lawmakers didn't anticipate the freelance of two-income families, so there's always been a sort of marriage penalty for couples whose incomes topped the single-earner income taxation level.

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