The head of the National Health Service should resign for presiding over the ‘appalling care’ that led to at least 1,200 patient deaths at Stafford Hospital, victims’ families claimed today. As Robert Francis QC’s damning 1,782 page report was finally published and found ‘failures at every level’ which led to the scandal, the Prime Minister revealed that not a single nurse or doctor has been disciplined or struck-off. Patients at Stafford Hospital were left lying in their own urine and excrement for days, forced to drink water from vases, given the wrong medication or sent home with life-threatening conditions. But despite hundreds of people dying needlessly over four years, Francis’s report does not blame anyone for the dismal care as problems ‘cannot be cured by finding scapegoats or sacking individuals,’ he said.

(Dr. Benny Peiser)