By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
England’s National Health Service (NHS) is under fire again for allowing a 43 year old man with Downs Syndrome to accidentally starve to death because hospital staff failed to realize he wasn’t receiving food or water through the tube in his nose.
Martin Ryan was admitted to an NHS hospital a month ago after suffering a stroke which left him unable to swallow.
According to a report in London’s MailOnline, doctors thought nurses were feeding him through a tube in his nose. He was in the hospital 19 days before the staff realized the tube was not providing him with any food or water. By the time they discovered the oversight, Ryan was too weak for the operation required to insert a tube into his stomach. He died in agony five days later.
The Mail reports that Ryan’s distraught family is convinced he could have been saved by the correct treatment. One relative said of him: ‘Martin will always be the light of my life. He had a quirky sense of humour and oodles of charm. He was often smiling–he loved to go out, liked the movement of the coach and listening to the music.”
American attorney and author, Wesley Smith, an expert on end-of-life issues, says he is not surprised that a patient with a disability was allowed to starve to death.
“ I don’t believe it is a coincidence that Martin had Down syndrome,” Smith said on his popular blog, Second Hand Smoke. “How can anyone starve to death over nearly a month in a hospital and it go unnoticed? Questions must be answered. What was done when the ‘mistake’ was discovered to try and help him? And why was he allowed to ‘die in agony?’ This travesty should be investigated at the highest levels of government until the full truth is known!”
Sadly, this is not an isolated case. NHS records show that 3,645 people died as a result of “patient safety incidents”–including botched operations and the outbreak of infections – between April 2007 and March 2008. The figure was 1,370 higher than two years earlier. Patient groups have warned that the true toll is likely to be higher because some hospitals do not record all incidents.
“We have the problem here too, of course,” Smith said, “but such a soaring rate in such a very short period of time, reflects deep problems within the NHS.”
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