Tragic doc’s family launch legal action against NHS
The family of a Scots doctor killed by lung cancer have launched legal action against the NHS over his death.
They claim Professor Kieran Sweeney, a former top GP who died aged just 58 in 2009, became ill after breathing in dust from asbestos pipe lagging at several Glasgow hospitals, including the Southern General and the Royal Infirmary, in the late 1970s.
The affects of asbestos can take up to 20 years to develop.
It’s the second legal action over the death from lung disease of a former employee NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have faced in the last five years.
In 2009, Prof Sweeney’s former colleague, Dr Audrey Finnegan, settled out of court with them after developing mesothelioma. The mum-of-three who died just six months ago, believed she contracted it by breathing in asbestos dust in Glasgow’s Belvidere Hospital in 1986.
Last night, campaigners warned the NHS could face a tidal wave of claims from former staff who have developed lung diseases from asbestos.
Dr Jean Turner, of Scotland Patients Association, said: “It’s appalling that staff and patients have been exposed to toxic substances that so cruelly shorten lives. The dangers of asbestos were known in the mid 1960s yet little care was given to this.
“I can only imagine other health workers and possibly patients were also exposed. Payouts will be substantial.”
Glasgow-born Professor Sweeney, a dad-of-four, passed away on Christmas Eve, 2009. In a heartbreaking YouTube clip filmed shortly before his death he sobbed: “I am a man devoid of hope.”
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde was fined £6,000 just months ago after workers and patients at Yorkhill Children’s Hospital were potentially exposed to deadly asbestos fibres. The hospital basement plant room was found to contain asbestos in February, 2009.
The Health and Safety Executive revealed that hospital workers and outside contractors had access to the contaminated area.
Earlier this year, Audrey Finnegan died after a four-year battle with mesothelioma. She underwent chemotherapy as well as surgery to remove a lung and spent her son’s 12th birthday recovering in hospital. The former East Kilbride GP was forced to give up her job and became a campaigner for the charity, Clydeside Action on Asbestos (CAA). She passed away leaving her hospital doctor husband Michael, two daughters and son devastated.
She previously said she remembered how she had been exposed to the asbestos. Writing on the CAA’s website she said: “It was very dusty and I remember my footprints leaving their imprint on the flooring.”
At the time she dismissed it because she “couldn’t believe the health board would expose staff to asbestos.”
A spokesman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “NHSGGC is no different to any other organisation responsible for buildings constructed before 1999 when the import, sale and second hand re-use of white asbestos was banned in the UK.
“We fully comply with all the legislative requirements around asbestos surveillance, management and disposal. This legislation does not extend, however, to tracing people who have worked, resided, received treatment or visited these sites.
“It would be inappropriate to comment on any ongoing legal case.”
Did you get mesothelioma from working or staying in a hospital? Call us on 0141 567 2776.
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