subject: 'you Have Leukemia And Will Be Dead In A Year' [print this page] A startling string of medical errors led to a man from Essex being incorrectly told he was going to die within a year.
46-year old Anthony Moore was diagnosed with leukemia after developing anaemia and low haemoglobin, the result of earlier treatment for an infected wound which was also incorrectly diagnosed as MRSA.
The drug he was given for MRSA, Linezolid, was said to have caused a condition known as peripheral neuropathy, the symptoms of which included the blood problems as well as swelling and numbness in some parts of his body, most notably his left leg. In the worst case scenario, the leg may need to be amputated.
He understandably made a claim for injury compensation from Basildon Hospital, alleging that not only had they caused possibly irreversible damage to his central nervous system, they had inflicted serious psychological harm upon him by intimating that he only had a short time left to live.
The first component of his claim is straightforward enough: medical negligence, to a quite awesome degree, has caused injuries from which Mr Moore may never recover. He has trouble walking thanks to the nerve palsy in his knee and falls over frequently.
The second element of his injury compensation concerns a concept that is usually difficult to prove: psychological harm is hard to quantify but in this case has apparently been factored into the compensation package, which totals GBP175,000.
The NHS seems to have been paying out injury compensation left right and centre over the last few years: only last month the Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the same trust as Mr Moore claimed from, paid out GBP90,000 after failings led to severely disabled patient Kyle Flack suffocating to death. There are other horror stories of filth-riddled care homes and nurses so idle that they could not be bothered to feed elderly patients their meals.
In Mr Moore's case, the trust did not dispute liability. As with any successful personal injury claim, the entirety or the majority of fault for the accident must not lie with the claimant. The guilty party must owe a duty of care to the victim. The hospital trust and the NHS most definitely owed a duty of care to Mr Moore, a patient of theirs, which they did not fulfil with any care or attention.
The payout in this case will go some way to compensating Mr Moore for his ordeal, which a friend says has affected him deeply, and for the fact that since his accident he has been unable to work in the same line of employment as he did before.
His solicitor said, ''The claimant was incorrectly advised he was suffering from leukaemia and would die within a year, but it was subsequently discovered that he was actually suffering from peripheral neuropathy believed to have been caused by prolonged and unmonitored administration of Linezoli,' according to the Daily Mail.
As a side note, it is fascinating to note the position of the Mail, who are usually vehemently opposed to the concept of most compensation payments in the UK.
In this case, it would be a hard-edged commentator who argued that Mr Moore did not deserve compensation for his ordeal. in fact, a more genuine and deserving case is rather hard to summon to mind. This is why we have a provision for compensation in UK law: and medical negligence is one of the most disturbing examples of a breach of trust.
Say what you will, but without this legislation, many people injured by public bodes or people they are dependent on would have nowhere else to turn.
