UK: NHS doctors with Long Covid sue the NHS, 2024

[SNT Gatchaman]

Sky News — 'The NHS sold out its staff': Doctors whose lives were devastated by long COVID to sue health service

https://news.sky.com/story/the-nhs-...-by-long-covid-to-sue-health-service-13055384

Hundreds of doctors are planning to sue the NHS over claims inadequate PPE on the frontline has left them with long COVID, disabled, and in financial ruin.

Dr Fearnley co-founded Long COVID Doctors for Action (LCD4A), which is today pledging legal action against the NHS for negligent workplace exposure to coronavirus, resulting in injury and financial loss.

The group, which is being represented by the legal firm Bond Turner, claims the NHS decided to downgrade guidance as the virus took hold in March 2020, only requiring staff to wear blue surgical face masks, plastic aprons, and gloves when dealing with suspected or confirmed COVID cases.

"At 37 I'm living and relying on my 70-year-old father for support. If it wasn't for him I'd be homeless."

One consultant, who asked to remain anonymous, but whose income protection and life insurance were denied, said: "I was once at the peak of my career and have had to give up all my dreams and become a shell of my former self.

"There is no hope at present and at times I wish I died during COVID."

Legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg says all claimants face a considerable legal challenge in proving the NHS was negligent at that time.

"They have to show that their employers, the hospitals they were working in, didn't meet what were then-accepted standards of care.

 

[Solstice]

I wish them the best of luck going up against the NHS. If the government and insurers were to do right by the people they've made sick or the people they denied adequate care they'd be out of billions. It's a small fine to pay for destroying peoples lives.

 

[Trish]

My sympathy to the doctors involved. The PPE situation in the UK was disastrous for many. For every doctor affected there are likely to be large multiples of others working in the NHS, particularly nurses who spent all day every day on the wards, equally affected. This could cost billions, and doubtless the government will want to fight it.

 

[rvallee]

Seems kind of weird what with pretty much all control measures having been stopped for a while now. So that judgment should also apply to the current lack of protections, and so is very unlikely to win. It should pass, but might is right. At best it would drag on for years.

As long as this issue remains confined locally, every health care system doing its own things separate from the rest of the world, it's unlikely that anything will happen. This is a problem that requires international collaboration in a coherent effort, and wow are we far from seeing any of this.

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

Also iNews (strangely in the "lifestyle" section) —

I’m a doctor with spinal damage from Covid – this is why I’m suing the NHS
Nathalie MacDermott, a paediatric infectious diseases doctor, she says: 'If we had another pandemic tomorrow, I think we would make the same mistakes again'

I continued to challenge the PPE guidance until I got Covid again in May 2020. After my initial acute Covid symptoms settled, I noticed I was still getting a lot of nerve pain in my feet, which then developed into limiting my ability to walk. It’s thought that Covid somehow damaged my spinal cord, but it’s not entirely clear how or what exactly happened.

I now struggle to lift my legs off the ground, so I can only walk very short distances on my own, and a bit longer on crutches. I also suffer from fatigue and get tired easily, I have bladder and bowel impairment, I have issues with dry eyes and mouth. Are they Covid related? Who knows, but that’s when they started for me. Either way, these symptoms haven’t changed in the last three and a half years.

 

[Mij]

Merged thread

I'm a doctor with spinal damage from COVID- this is why I'm suing the NHS

Nathalie MacDermott is a paediatric infectious diseases doctor and clinical lecturer at King’s College London. While working on a Covid ward at Great Ormond Street in May 2020, she contracted Covid, leading to a spinal injury that impairs her ability to work until this day. She is part of Long Covid Doctors for Action, an advocacy group that is filing a class action lawsuit with the NHS for not adequately protecting healthcare workers from the risks of infection.


https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle...om-covid-this-is-why-im-suing-the-nhs-2873364