NHS Death Row: August 2009

Dead patients don't cost the NHS a thing

NHS should not save patients' lives if it costs too much, says watchdog

When a doctor can save a life, he is supposed to do it, but some do not encourage this, and others discourage it.

It happens enough that it can only be by design.

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How many women need to stand up to Britain’s cash-strapped National Health Service and strip its policies bare to reveal a strange, ingrown corruption that declares some patients inoperable, and sends them home to die, in order to balance their books and reduce waiting lists?The dual culprits in my husbands' potential demise were a nastily burgeoning aneurysm on his aorta, and a National Health Service so good at hiding life-saving information, even from itself, that it could spend as much to kill him as to save him.

When a doctor can save a life, he is supposed to do it, but some keep silent about expensive treatment. Dead patients don't cost the NHS a thing.This could happen to any one of us.

When you are given a prognosis with no hope, please don’t stop there. The worldwide web is very useful to help research anything and everything that might apply to your illness. My own research found life-saving information in the USA, The Netherlands, Germany and Norway. But what I really needed was right here in the UK - the NHS just didn't want me to know about it. This story has been featured in Take a Break magazine in the UK.