£25,000 for a lifetime of Hurt

The government needs to be fair in its compensation offering to the thousands of women who have been irreversibly harmed by mesh.

Today, the patient safety commissioner published the ‘Hughes Report’ on options for redress for those harmed by pelvic mesh and valproate. 

The report makes ten recommendations to the government on how to provide suitable redress to those harmed by the use of transvaginal mesh and sodium valproate in pregnancy.

Leaving aside the fact that Primodos was left out of the review (we’ll come back to this issue), we wanted to address the derisory offering to victims.

In the report for those affected by transvaginal mesh, the commissioner “wanted to amplify patients’ views rather than endorse a specific figure – in line with her statutory remit and this project's scope. 

The commissioner reports that “patients told us the interim payment should be – with figures ranging from £20,000 to over £340,000. Given the Commissioner’s role and remit, we wanted to amplify the voices of patients on this topic, rather than make a proposal ourselves. The median figure from our survey was £25,000.”

However, the …