Five-month-old Esta High died at Leeds General Infirmary in November 2023 after doctors put her symptoms down to Covid-19
A baby girl who died from meningitis may have been saved if doctors had tested her for the infection sooner, rather than putting her symptoms down to Covid, an inquest jury has found.
Five-month-old Esta High died at Leeds General Infirmary in November 2023, days after she was taken into the emergency department with a high temperature and vomiting.
Lawyers tell inquiry ‘patients’ lives are at stake’ through improper use of Oxevision system for most vulnerable
Families bereaved by the misuse of an “intrusive” camera monitoring system for vulnerable patients used in half of England’s mental health wards, have called for it to be banned to help prevent more avoidable deaths.
Lawyers for the families said “patients’ lives are at stake” by the continuing use of Oxevision, the Lampard inquiry into mental health deaths in Essex heard on Tuesday.
The inquiry was told that five patients killed themselves, or died unexpectedly, in two years while being surveilled by Oxevision’s infrared cameras at Essex Partnership University NHS foundation trust (Eput).
Peter Mant KC, representing more than 70 bereaved families, including the family of Elise Sebastian, 16, who killed herself in 2021 when staff had muted Oxevision’s alarm system, said: “Use of this technology has contributed in material ways to harms, and in some cases deaths of patients, due to the misapplication of the system.”
Addressing Kate Lampard, the chair of the inquiry, Brenda Campbell KC, representing other bereaved families including that of Sophie Alderman who the inquiry heard mistakenly believed in 2022 that Oxevision would bring staff to save her, said: “We urge you to recommend that the use of Oxevision on mental health inpatient wards is stopped nationally.”
She added: “Its harms have fallen hardest on detained, traumatised and neurodivergent patients, and no regulator took responsibility for it.”
The care sector was “an afterthought” during the Covid-19 pandemic, and government failures caused the virus to spread “like wildfire” among vulnerable and elderly people, a public inquiry has found.
Heather Hallett, who is leading the Covid-19 inquiry, said it was a “significant omission” that the government did not advise that patients discharged from hospitals into care homes should be isolated, causing the virus to spread rapidly among residents and staff.
Rise in economic hardship and changes in attitudes towards migration could explain drop in support, experts say
Public support for the NHS’s founding principles – that it is free to use, available to everyone and tax-funded – has fallen over the last five years, research has shown.
Backing for all three pillars dropped between 2021 and 2025 across the UK population, except for a small rise in millennials’ support for the NHS being funded from taxation.
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