TWO MORE SOCIALIZED MEDICINE HORROR STORIES

TELEGRAPH:

The husband of a woman who died from blood poisoning six days after giving birth to their second child received £600,000 in compensation yesterday after two NHS trusts apologised for a series of blunders that led to her death.

Ben Palmer's wife, Jessica, was 34 when she suffered a cardiac arrest in the operating theatre, leaving him to bring up their two children, Harry and Emily, now five and two.

Mrs Palmer, a personal assistant to the Conservative MP Peter Lilley, was discharged from Kingston Hospital in Surrey the day after she gave birth, even though she had low blood pressure, a fast pulse and a high temperature - all signs of infection. As her condition deteriorated and she developed a red patch across her stomach, the couple contacted Mrs Palmer's GP, who prescribed painkillers for back pain, and her midwife, but she was not readmitted to hospital until five days later.

She died the next day from multiple organ failure caused by streptococcal septicaemia.

At the inquest into her death, a community midwife from St George's Hospital in Tooting, south-west London, admitted that she had made a "gross mistake" in not referring Mrs Palmer to a doctor earlier.

LONDON TIMES:

Penny Campbell became ill and died over the course of a bank holiday weekend despite the attention of eight doctors. Her grieving partner believes that she would still be alive if the NHS out-of-hours system worked properly.

Angus MacKinnon said that Ms Campbell, 41, had been a victim of the Government’s approach to healthcare reform. She died from blood poisoning at the Royal London Hospital, East London, after she became infected during an operation for haemorrhoids. Her condition would have been easy to treat if caught in time, but she fell ill over the Easter weekend in 2005, while her GP was on holiday.

[ALL UMPH ADDED.] NATIONALIZED/UNIVERSAL/SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE SUCKS. WE MUSTN'T TURN OUR SYSTEM INTO ONE ANYTHING LIKE THE ONE EUROPEAN HAVE. WHICH IS OFFICIALLY WHAT THE LEFTIST-DOMINATED DEMS WANT TO DO!