{Sophia} Inquest Implications - Eileen Marshall and Margaret

[Guest guest]

INQUEST IMPLICATIONS?

Eileen Marshall         Margaret

16th June 2006

The General Medical Council's " duties of a doctor " (2001) state that

doctors must make the care of the patient their first concern and they

must not 'give or recommend to patients any investigation or treatment

which (they) know is not in their best interests, nor withhold

appropriate treatments'.  This was acknowledged on 15th June 2006 by

Dr Benbow of The Royal College of Psychiatrists in the Daily

Telegraph.

The GMC stipulations are clear enough, so why then are sufferers from

ME/CFS excluded from such protection?

There can be few people in the UK ME community who have not by now heard

the results of the inquest into the tragic death from ME/CFS of 32

year-old Sophia Mirza, the beloved daughter of Criona from

Brighton.  Although severely sick with medically diagnosed ME/CFS,

Sophia was abused by the doctors charged with her care by being wrongly

sectioned under the Mental Health Act.  Increasingly in cases of

ME/CFS, the law which states that a person may be sectioned only if they

represent a danger to themselves and / or to others is being swept aside

by some influential but misinformed doctors involved with ME/CFS.

Sophia's mother recorded:

" In July, the professionals returned  -  as promised by the

psychiatrist. The police smashed down the door and Sophia was taken to a

locked room within a locked ward of the local mental hospital. Despite

the fact that she was bed-bound, she reported that she did not receive

even basic nursing care, her temperature, pulse and blood pressure

(which had been 80/60), were never taken.  Sophia told me that her bed

was never made, that she was never washed, her pressure areas were never

attended to and her room and bathroom were not cleaned. " Cont'd

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http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/Inquest_Implications.htm