Averil's death ........ The Big Picture

The days roll by trying to get answers and accountability from our NHS health service.

Sadly no one involved seems to care enough about Averil's death and the mistakes that were made to be able to say .... we (the NHS) failed in our duty of care to a young person who was our responsibility and who needed our help to stay alive.

It seems that society is able to make the big gestures.

We can launch a helicopter to save yachtsman in the middle of the atlantic or southern ocean, we can raise millions to save an endangered species ... but when it comes to providing a qualified and experienced clinician to look after a high risk, vulnerable young individual just once a week - We FAIL.

And when there is failure as in the case of the NHS looking after Averil at university, there is no one in this monolithic structure that is accountable, no one who says we must learn, we must never let this happen again to a young person or an AN sufferer.

Instead there is denial, even when the evidence is crystal clear and there is a presumption by the NHS that everything will be resolved by a legal department somewhere and that some money will be paid to smooth things over. 

This isnt right now and it will never be right. 

Society needs to understand that it exists partly to protect those members that need help when they are in dire need; not just when they are at sea in the middle of the Southern Ocean, but also when they are "in peril" just 4 miles from the head office of a medical "service" in Norwich which is supposed to be looking after a young vulnerable patient.

Nic 06/08/2014