Mesh victims: Scottish Government has failed us again by not giving urgent financial help

Mesh-injured women have accused the Scottish Government of failing them yet again, this time over redress.

Last week, England’s patient safety commissioner said that women injured by pelvic mesh implants and families of children left disabled by an epilepsy drug should be given urgent financial help.

Dr Henrietta Hughes said mesh-injured women should receive immediate £20,000 interim redress payments, while children who suffered devastating disabilities when their mothers were prescribed the anti-epilepsy drug sodium valproate should be given £100,000.

Hughes described victims’ ­decades-long battle for justice as a “callous disregard for their pain and suffering”.

The Scottish Government – which has yet to appoint its own Patient Safety Commissioner – said it was reviewing the Hughes report.

‘Simply shameful’

Elaine Holmes, one of the ­founding members of campaign group Scottish Mesh Survivors, criticised the Scottish Government’s failure to offer redress.

She said: “The Scottish Government knows very well that mesh-injured women not only lost their health, their careers, marriages and their future simply because the NHS wanted to ‘save’ money on a procedure that ended up causing life-changing injuries to thousands of us.

“For them to continue ­dragging their feet when they could have at least given some interim redress to women who have had to pay for adaptations to their homes is simply shameful.

“Despite the dreadful toll mesh has taken on all our lives, being expected to continue fighting and pushing for even a shred of justice is cruel beyond belief. There is simply no reason why Scotland could not have paid redress to all those affected by these medical scandals. And if they want to fight and squabble with Westminster over the issue that is up to them.

“Scotland was the first country to agree to appoint a Patient Safety Commissioner on publication of the Julia Cumberledge report First Do No Harm. We still don’t have a commissioner, in fact that appointment is probably still years away.”

Women who had their lives ruined did not need mesh in the first place, report reveals

Scotland introduced the use of plastic mesh kits in a bid to “save” about £200 per patient compared with traditional repair methods that required more experienced surgeons to carry out surgery to correct bladder and pelvic complications ­following childbirth.

However, hundreds of thousands of women around the world reported horrific injuries, with mesh manufacturers spending billions on compensation in the US – while most victims here received a tiny fraction in comparison.

‘Deeply upsetting’

Scotland’s top health and medical law expert, Professor Alison Britton, whose work on mesh exposed that women were left injured for life after being given implants they were never supposed to be treated with, said the Scottish Government response was “deeply upsetting for women who had lost everything”.

She said: “Rather than leave those women and children stuck inside what is essentially a kind of vacuum, waiting for action to be taken, the right thing for the Scottish Government to do is to settle redress and allow these patients to get on with their lives without the further trauma and stress of having to continue fighting for some kind of justice.”

Former Scottish health secretary Alex Neil backed the calls for action, 10 years after he was so appalled at the life-changing injuries women suffered that he was the first in the world to suspend the use of pelvic mesh. He called for Scotland’s newly appointed health secretary, Neil Gray, to make the issue a “priority”.

Neil said: “It is shameful that more than a decade later Scotland has gone from leading the world on this issue to trailing behind everyone else.”

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Scottish Conservative MSP Jackson Carlaw, who has continued to fight for medically injured patients, said: “Progress on redress for mesh survivors in Scotland has been painfully slow and the significance of the report compiled by Dr Hughes must not be ignored.”

Mesh campaigner Neil Findlay, a former Scottish Labour MSP, said: “I am appalled this is where we are now after more than a decade of campaigning and fighting by those brave women. Neil Gray must put the mesh debacle at the top of his priority list and get it sorted once and for all.”

The Scottish Government said: “We are reviewing the report to see what the implications are for Scotland.”