Scandalous actions of the NHS

This is a child who since the age of four has undergone a series of debilitating and painful courses of medical treatment.

Having been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia she had to struggle through an intensive four month programme of chemotherapy which took the hair from her head and the skin from various parts of her body.

After two months the high strength drugs also caused a hole in her heart.

When she was finally allowed to return to her home in Hereford she weighed just two and a half stone and had to be fed by a nasal tube.

She recovered well enough to attend school. But just before her 12th birthday she collapsed and was taken to Birmingham Children's Hospital where she was kept alive with drugs until she could be fitted with a device to keep her heart beating normally.

This is a child who knows more about suffering than most of us. Those who meet her are struck by the maturity and wisdom that her experiences have forged.

So when it was suggested she needed a heart transplant to survive and she declined both the Birmingham doctors and her parents--Kirsty and Andrew --accepted her decision and after a further seven months in hospital she went home again.

It was when she went for a check-up at Hereford Hospital that a decision was made which shames the NHS.

A doctor there referred her case to the child protection unit and the family received a telephone call saying that the hospital was contemplating sending a team of police officers to take Hannah from them and seeking a High Court order to go ahead with a transplant operation.

Only when a child protection officer met Hannah face to face did the hospital back down.
That the NHS could even contemplate forcing child to undergo a major surgical procedure is repulsive enough. When the transplant in Hannah's case had an unpredictable outcome and could have led to the return of the leukaemia it beggars belief.

But if the threat against Hannah was arrogant and cruel then there is another aspect to this case that makes the actions of the NHS even more scandalous.

The decision to deploy coercion against this sick teenager was triggered by a locum, a stand-in.

After all the years she had spent in hospitals and given the relationships she had established with a string of doctors the very idea that a decision of this magnitude could be taken by an individual who did not even know Hannah is utterly unforgivable.

And tells us all we need to know about the NHS at its cold, inhuman, impersonal worst.