MRSA robbed me of my life too...but I didn’t get a penny!

Jan 18 2008 by Greg Tindle, South Wales Echo

A GRANDMOTHER crippled by MRSA today hit out at the £5m record compensation given to actress Leslie Ash for contracting the same hospital superbug.

Audrey Hughes, 86, says her life was destroyed by the superbug after picking it up in hospital following her hip operation – but she received no compensation.

Today she described the payout to the former Men Behaving Badly star as “absolutely disgraceful”.

Lawyers for Ms Ash defended the size of the NHS payout by London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, where she picked up the bug following an operation for a broken leg. They said it was justified by her potential lost earnings in the TV and film world.

But Mrs Hughes, who received nothing from the NHS after her infection following an operation at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in 2000, slammed the huge payout.

“Ever since the day of that operation I have been robbed of the life I have left and become an invalid,” said the grandmother, of Heol Edwards, Nantgarw.

Mrs Hughes, who used to run a floristry business in Bargoed, Rhymney Valley, said her whole world had changed after being hit by MRSA and she was angry that she had not been advised that she could seek help or compensation.

She said: “I was told by hospital staff that I had MRSA and my whole life has been a nightmare ever since. I’ve been so ill that all I do is stare at the four walls around me. It’s been hell on earth. Leslie Ash can get around with a stick – I have to use a wheelchair.

“My late husband Gordon used to nurse me at home but when he died four years ago I was left on my own.

“I would have liked a fraction of what Leslie Ash received and would have spent it on a nice holiday in a health farm.”

Mrs Hughes accepts that when she was diagnosed with MRSA the condition had not received the nationwide recognition that is currently accepted.

“I was put into isolation for eight weeks and was very ill,” she said.

“Today I can only get around in a wheelchair but when I eventually got around to looking for compensation I was told by legal advisers that I was too late. A claim has to be made within three years but I missed out.”

A spokeswoman for patients group, The Patients’ Association, said there were lessons to be learnt from the payout. “This is a wake-up call to the whole NHS,,” she said. “Had best practice been carried out during her (Ms Ash’s) hospital care, we would not be in this position today.”

greg.tindle@mediawales.co.uk