I’ve lifted this direct from ‘The Guardian’, today. I don’t
think they or the author will mind.
It’s a very important article about how health professionals
assumptions about the disabled determines the treatment patients get.
You could actually substitute many other categories too;the
elderly, ethnic minorities, working class or mentally ill.
When resources are short and waiting lists long, these first
impressions/ quick decisions have really serious consequences for people.
There’s nothing wrong with Doctors and Nurses, they just reflect
the prejudices everybody has. It’s something we have to fight:
========//========
"My daughter is disabled so I know at first hand how badly NHS
staff often treat people like her."
Ian Birrell
The Guardian, Wednesday 22 May 2013
My daughter
was ill at the weekend. Just a heavy cold; but when your child has profound and
multiple learning disabilities, even a minor illness can send her life-threatening
condition spiralling out of control, so we needed to get some antibiotics. As
so often, it was a dispiriting experience.
First, the
111 operator asked what language our daughter spoke and whether she could come
to the phone, despite being told she was non-verbal. Then the nurse asked about
her symptoms but never bothered to discuss her underlying condition, although
she is under palliative care. And finally the doctor who came to the house
looked uncertain how to deal with a disabled person, never talking to her once.
Tiny things
– yet all too typical in the health service. Staff should be used to patients
with complex conditions and disabilities; sadly, this is often not the case. We
have experienced far worse than these minor annoyances in the 20 years since
our daughter was born, including a doctor giving her an injection despite being
warned it could kill her. Thankfully, she survived. But all too many people
with disabilities end up being killed by the health service – the very institution
supposedly dedicated to saving their lives.
The latest
case is distressing and disturbing: Tina Papalabropoulos, a young woman
scarcely older than my own child dying after a series of blunders by two NHS
organisations – a hospital and out-of-hours GP service – in Essex. Quite rightly,
her mother, Christine, is angry. "When your child becomes ill and you need
professional help from doctors, you and your child are looked at and you can
see their mind working, 'Is there any point in trying to save this child's life?'
You can see that they think, 'This child has an existence and not a life',"
she said.
The loss of
this young life was a needless tragedy. But it is far from an isolated one.
Each week 24 disabled people are killed by such prejudiced presumptions;
indeed, there was a case at my local hospital recently. These shocking figures
are based on a government-commissioned inquiry into one region of the country,
which found people with disabilities 37% more likely to be killed by
incompetence or inadequate care – and their lives end on average 16 years
earlier than they should. The more serious the disabilities, the higher the
risk.
Forgive me
if I fail to join the national worship of the NHS. Mencap has been campaigning
to prevent these deaths, logging at least 100 cases over the past six years.
The charity blames poor communication with parents and carers as the main cause
– but it has concluded that the only explanation for so many preventable deaths
is prejudice. Doctors and nurses reflect views prevalent across society that
people with profound disabilities are second-class citizens, their lives not
worth saving. Imagine the furore if any other minority group was dying in such
numbers.
There is a
shameful failure to understand that every life is different yet all have the
same value. This is the fumbling bigotry – and that is the only word for it –
that emerges when people tell a grieving parent their son or daughter is
perhaps better off dead. This is the starker bigotry that explains the rise in
hate crime, the reluctance of employers to hire people with disabilities, the resurgence
of eugenics. It explains why disabled people live under a form of apartheid,
for all the hot air around the Paralympics.
Sometimes
these attitudes sneak into the open. A Cornish councillor has compared children
like mine to deformed lambs, saying they could be dealt with at birth by
"smashing them against a wall". There was widespread disgust over his
comments. Yet a less violent form of such prejudice can be found lurking under the
polite veneer across society – and when its malevolent presence is in the health
service, the consequences can be fatal. I live in hope one day my nation will
wake up – but until then, many more innocent people will die simply because they
are disabled.”
Neil Harris
(a don’t stop till you drop production)
Home:
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Contact:
neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
