‘Help, I can’t breathe,’ said the harrowing message played to an inquest jury yesterday. Muscular dystrophy sufferer Gavin died of heart failure during the power cut at the Ashdale Care Home in Pembroke, West Wales.
Gavin Proctor who died after staff tried to connect a spare battery to his life support machine, while in darkness His parents, who lost another son Sean, 30, to the same illness nine years ago said they are hoping the inquest will provide answers to their Gavin’s death in January 2009.
Mrs Proctor, 69, said: ‘We want everyone to know how we feel. We have lost our son and we don’t want this to happen to others. It still bites.’ The inquest heard Gavin may have survived if non-medical care assistants had given mouth-to-mouth instead of trying to wire up a back-up battery pack in darkness. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has already decided that the home owners will not face prosecution for Mr Proctor's death.
You can hear Mr Proctor's final call here.
5 comments:
friend of mine died in hospital, also due to some mechanical failure : the malfunction alarm didn't work on the machine, was only found in the morning
i do hope the hospital learned from that...
Brutal. Utterly brutal.
Imagine if that's the last memory of your loved one. Creepy! That will haunt me every night.
that's what "haunts" me indeed with the death of my friend : the machine failed & he struggled to get help, but no one heard him - he choked to death
"that's a disadvantage of having a room of your own in hospital" isn't a suitable answer in his case
(even more : he was a most sociable guy, never alone - except there...)
A nursing home isn't required to have backup generators? Seems really fishy.
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