Hundreds of NHS hospital patients are dying of malnutrition

Malnutrition in NHS hospitals has featured time and again in our newspapers*.

Clearly nothing effective is ever done about this, or these appalling cases of starvation would not continue to be reported.

The causes of this scandalous situation, which particularly affects elderly patients, include staff time being taken up with form-filling and other paperwork instead of actually providing care to patients, ageist attitudes in the NHS, poor quality food, poor management and inadequate inspection. But in my opinion, one important cause is the lack of sanctions against staff who have uncaring attitudes toward their patients.

And why do the politicians do nothing effective about this cruel neglect? Elderly, vulnerable patients don't count for many votes, I guess. And the NHS is the biggest employer in Britain. Our political parties do not want to upset members of the NHS's huge labour force as that would be too many votes to risk. That's what I think, anyway.

Margaret Wilde www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk

*Here are some examples and references all from Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1584315/One-in-four-adults-in-hospital-malnourished.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1574609/Patients-left-to-starve-on-NHS-wards.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4178735/Patient-died-of-starvation-in-NHS-hospital.html