‘Filthy patients’ left without food or water

The deaths of hundreds of hospital patients, left without food or water in filthy conditions, exposed an urgent need to change the culture of Britain’s NHS, a report said yesterday.

Between 400 and 1,200 patients are estimated to have died needlessly at Stafford Hospital in central England between Jan 2005 and Mar 2009 in one of the worst scandals to hit the NHS since it was founded in 1948.

“There were patients so desperate for water that they were drinking from dirty flower vases,” British prime minister David Cameron told the parliament.

Describing events at Stafford Hospital as “a despicable catalogue of clinical and managerial failures”, Cameron apologised to all the families affected on behalf of the government and the country.

The author of the 3,000-page report, lawyer Robert Francis, said: “This is a story of appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people.

“They were failed by a system which ignored the warning signs and put corporate self-interest and cost control ahead of patients and their safety.

“Elderly and vulnerable patients were left unwashed, unfed, and without fluids. They were deprived of dignity and respect. Some patients had to relieve themselves in their beds when they were offered no help to get to the bathroom.”

Francis said some patients were left in excrement-stained sheets and some who could not eat or drink without help did not receive it.

Reuters