‘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.