British soldiers fighting 'appalling' hospital care
Email this storyPrint this story 5:00AM Monday March 12, 2007
By Ned Temko and Mark Townsend
British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq feel betrayed. Photo /
Reuters
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LONDON - A shocking picture of neglect and the appalling treatment of
wounded British troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan emerged yesterday
in a remarkable series of letters from soldiers' families.
The sheaf of complaints, passed on by deeply alarmed senior military
sources, claims soldiers have been deprived of adequate pain relief and
emotional support, and in some cases are unable to sleep because of
night-time noise in the tax-funded National Health Service (NHS) facilities
caring for them.
The NHS said it had launched an inquiry into the complaints.
One letter sent to the Ministry of Defence and NHS reveals how the youngest
British soldier wounded in Iraq, Jamie Cooper, was forced to spend a night
lying in his own faeces after staff at Birmingham's Selly Oak Hospital
allowed his colostomy bag to overflow. On another occasion his air mattress
was allowed to deflate, leaving him in "considerable pain" overnight despite
an alarm going off. Another complaint says one serviceman suffered more than
14 hours in agony without pain relief because no relevant staff were on
duty.
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Months after the row over mixed military-civilian wards, the new revelations
open potentially more serious allegations concerning the level of treatment
being provided to seriously injured troops.
The revelations also follow the recent scandal surrounding conditions at the
Americans' flagship domestic military hospital, the Walter Reed Army Medical
Centre in Washington, which prompted President George W. Bush to order a
review of US military hospitals.
Details of the complaints regarding British soldiers' care provoked shock
and indignation both from Opposition politicians and senior military
figures.
Tony Blair's long-time Chief of Defence Staff, Lord Charles Guthrie, said
the letters revealed a "scandalous" failure of care which the Government and
the military had an "urgent" duty to fix. In remarks that will be seen as
damning given his personal friendship with the Prime Minister, Guthrie
added: "The handling of the medical casualties from both Afghanistan and
Iraq is a scandal."
He said the blame did not lie with NHS staff, but with a "lack of leadership
and drive" by senior military medical officers and Government ministers in
addressing the need to provide purely military-run care for at least the
most serious casualties.
Guthrie said that Blair and other senior figures who had visited Selly Oak
had been misled about the level of care currently being provided.
"They were presented with a whitewashed version," he said.
Top military and political leaders, Guthrie added, "seem more interested in
finding excuses for why things are not good than in correcting them".
The opposition Conservative Party defence spokesman, Liam Fox, accused the
Government of "an act of betrayal against our bravest soldiers". Fox will
raise the issue in the House of Commons this week.
Sue Freeth, welfare director for the Royal British Legion of ex-service
personnel, which has 600,000 members, revealed they had, for the first time
in its 86-year-history, put forward a motion questioning medical treatment
for troops. She said: "We are very concerned about treatment. We know that
the MoD policy department are trying to address it but some of the areas are
beyond their control."
The complaints include an impassioned protest from the parents of Cooper,
18, the youngest British soldier injured in Iraq, detailing a series of
alleged lapses in his care at Selly Oak.
Their son, the letter concludes, had been "sent to Iraq straight from
training with no real military knowledge and [is] not receiving the care and
attention that is needed for his recovery".
A letter from the mother of another soldier treated at Selly Oak, Corporal
Alex Weldon, speaks of "grubby" surroundings, unbearable noise levels and
inadequate visiting facilities and concludes: "Surely the rest of us -
family members, military personnel or hospital staff and authorities, have a
duty of care to these brave men and women."
A further five-page document is from Weldon himself, written on behalf of a
number of wounded soldiers on the ward after having thought "long and hard"
about doing so. It complains of repeated failures to give adequate and
timely pain relief and insensitive comments by consultants.
Another letter is a handwritten plea for help sent last week from the mother
of 22-year-old Ben Parkinson, who was injured in Afghanistan. It accuses the
military of breaking a promise to give him a place in a military
rehabilitation facility at Headley Court in Surrey. She says both she and
her husband have now had to abandoned work in order to care for their son at
the London area civilian hospital where he has been sent.
An MoD spokesman said: "The decision to care for military patients within
specialist NHS units was driven by medical advice - the severity and
complexity of modern military injuries requires ... specialist medical and
nursing care, which can only be found in a few large hospital complexes in
the UK, such as Birmingham."
- OBSERVER