NHS cardiologist: ‘Years of Tory-led austerity contributed to my mother’s death’ Dr Aseem Malhotra said his mother, Anisha, who was a GP for 25 years, suffered setbacks in hospital which led to her premature death

A NHS cardiologist has condemned a decade of Tory-led austerity for the “systemic political failure” that he says has crippled the health service and contributed to his mother’s death.

Dr Aseem Malhotra said after being admitted to hospital with a temperature and extremely bad back pain, his mother Anisha, who was a GP in Ashton-under-Lyne, suffered a series of setbacks over several weeks which led to her premature death last year, aged 68.

“A GP that had dedicated over 25 years of her life to the NHS was ultimately failed by it,” Dr Malhotra says, writing in i shortly after the first anniversary of his mother’s death.

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Anisha had been diagnosed with discitis, an infection in the intervertebral disc space that can lead to severe consequences, such as sepsis, which proved to be resistant to antibiotics. A secondary heart attack as a result of the stress on her already frail body was enough to “tip her over the edge”, Dr Malhotra says.

“But what happened in hospital which eventually led to the premature death of a 68-year old lady in the most horrible of circumstances, and the profound emotional trauma of family members witnessing it was entirely avoidable.

“Rather than allow her to die with dignity, an overstretched system meant a missed heart attack was only noted by her medical team eleven days after it was reported. By then it was too late to save her. Excess intravenous fluids led to heart failure. It took several days of diuretics to make her comfortable and allow her to be taken off oxygen. But by then she’d slipped into a deep coma, never to wake up again.”

Dr Malhotra, who is also an anti-obesity campaigner and King’s Fund trustee, says there is “no doubt” years of austerity, and NHS underfunding have led to a shortage of nurses and doctors unable to keep up with increasing demand.

“The system is broken and money alone cannot fix it. The time where we could accept cautious evolution has passed; our NHS today needs a revolution. No one should suffer like my mother and no family should have to witness it.”

Responsibility

Dr Malhotra’s father, Dr Kailash Chand, is a retired GP and honorary vice president of the British Medical Association. The family have waited to speak out because they personally know the chief executive and many staff at the hospital where Anisha was being treated.

“This whole traumatic situation was also very difficult for me and my dad and it was very hard for me to write this piece,” Dr Malhotra told i. “Mum’s death was not a result of individual failings and we don’t want anyone at the hospital to be a scapegoat for system-wide failures. This has to be highlighted. We want to make sure the right people are held accountable.”

The Conservative Party was approached for comment.

The NHS in England has around 100,000 vacancies and its future has become the central issue, alongside Brexit, of the general election campaign. Following years of underfunding the Conservative Party has promised to raise spending levels for the health service in England by an extra £20.5bn a year by 2023-24. Labour has promised an extra £26bn a year as part of its “rescue plan” for the NHS.

However, both main parties’ migration policies pose a “very real risk” that they would worsen NHS understaffing, experts have warned, as it emerged that almost one in four hospital staff were born abroad.

The Nuffield Trust said that ending freedom of movement for EU citizens after Brexit – which both major parties back – would reduce the numbers coming to Britain and exacerbate lack of staff in both the NHS and social care. The thinktank’s research, published on Wednesday, showed that the proportion of hospital personnel born outside the UK has almost doubled from one in eight (11.9 per cent) in 2000/01 to close to one in four (23.5 per cent) in 2018/19.

How NHS funding has changed

Planned spending for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in England is £139.3bn in 2019/20. Though funding continues to grow, the rate of growth slowed during the period of austerity that followed the 2008 economic crash. Budgets rose by 1.5 per cent each year on average in the 10 years between 2009/10 to 2018/19, compared to the 3.7 per cent average rises since the NHS was established.

In July 2018, the NHS was given a new five-year funding deal that will see some health spending rise by 3.4 per cent on average from 2019/20 to 2023/24. This long-term funding deal excludes important areas of the DHSC budget such as capital investment and the education and training of NHS staff.

In this September’s Spending Round, the government announced further increases to budgets for capital investment, public health and the education and training of the NHS workforce. Even with these increases, the total DHSC budget will rise by 2.9 per cent between 2019/20 and 2020/21.