Inspiral Carpets drummer killed himself after 20 years of "unbearable" tinnitus

The wife of the Inspiral Carpets drummer Craig Gill has said there needs to be a greater awareness of the devastating effects of tinnitus after an inquest into his death returned an open verdict.

Rose Marie Gill issued a statement about the condition after an inquest into her husband’s death heard how the only concern he had in his life was the tinnitus he had had for more than 20 years.

Gill told a coroner how she discovered her 44-year-old husband dead at their home in Greenfield, Greater Manchester, after returning with their children from a day out.

She told the inquest in Heywood, Greater Manchester, that her husband’s death had baffled everyone who knew him and that her husband had no history of depression or suicidal thoughts. “That’s what’s shocking about it. I have no idea where this has come from,” she told the senior coroner for north Manchester, Joanne Kearsley.

In a statement issued after the hearing, she said her husband’s tinnitus became “so unbearable he felt there was no cure” and urged more awareness of the problem and men’s mental health.

She said in the statement: “Instead of reaching out, on that day in November, Craig made the saddest and most tragic of decisions.”

Gill said: “For the past 20 years, Craig suffered from debilitating tinnitus, a condition caused by not protecting his hearing when enjoying the careers he loved the most – a successful musician, DJ and love of listening to music.

“His condition affected his day-to-day wellbeing and he suffered in silence with both sleep deprivation and anxiety.”

She said: “Although we struggle with the day-to-day existence of life without Craig, we are now able to discuss and promote awareness of tinnitus and men’s mental health. It takes courage for men to speak out, to talk to one another, to share their thoughts and their fears.

“If you are one of those men, like Craig, we urge you to reach out to those you love and find comfort in sharing your pain.”

Inspiral Carpets members Graham Lambert, Stephen Holt and Clint Boon attended the inquest. Boon read a statement from the band that said: “We will always remember Craig for his great sense of humour, his passion for music, his incredible skills as a musician and his devotion to his family.

“Craig was a friend, a loyal son and brother, philosophical father and important member of our gang. We feel extremely privileged to have spent the last 30 years making music with him.”

Earlier, Gill had told the inquest how the whole family had set off early in the morning on Sunday 18 November last year and travelled to Media City, in Salford, to watch the recording of a children’s TV Christmas special.

She said that after they arrived at the studios, her husband said it was not something he really wanted to do and they decided he would go home. She said she thought this was perfectly normal behaviour as most men would not want to spend a day watching a children’s show in Christmas jumpers.

Gill described how she spoke to her husband on the phone during the day but he was not at the station to meet them. She said she and the children walked the short distance home, where she discovered his dead body.

DI Ian Harratt said a police investigation had shown no sign of any disturbance at the house but also found no suicide note.

Harratt told the coroner: “There was nothing in the information we have received that this was premeditated or preplanned. It appears to me that this is something that was completely out of the blue. It was something that took everybody who knew Mr Gill completely by surprise.”

The coroner told Gill it was clear her husband was responsible for taking his own life but she could not record a conclusion of suicide because she could not be sure, to the criminal standard of proof, that he had intended to kill himself.

Recording an open conclusion, Kearsley said she was sorry she could not offer the family an explanation for what happened.

She said he was also described as a “pillar of the community” who was “thought of so highly by everybody”.

Gill was a founding member of the Inspiral Carpets and played with the band throughout their heyday in the 1990s, returning when the band reformed 20 years later to tour and record their self-titled album in 2014.

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.

Inspiral Carpets drummer killed himself after 20 years of "unbearable" tinnitus

College Student with Severe Allergy Allegedly Hazed with Peanut Butter: "He Could Have Been Killed"

This article originally appeared on People.com. 

Central Michigan University is investigating an allegation that a student with a severe peanut allergy was covered with peanut butter while passed out during a hazing incident at the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity last fall, the school’s spokeswoman confirmed to PEOPLE.

Heather Smith said alleged victim Andrew Seely spent the fall 2016 semester as a student at the university.

“We take these types of things very seriously,” Smith tells PEOPLE. “So the CMU Police Department and CMU’s Office of Student Conduct responded immediately and started looking into it. The alleged incident would have taken place off-campus, so we involved the Mt. Pleasant Police Department because that would have been their jurisdiction. To my knowledge, there still has not been a police report filed with them, but it’s a potentially criminal matter.”

Mt. Pleasant Police Department spokesman Jeff Brown tells PEOPLE that, as of mid-day Thursday, they “do not have any open investigations into this information that’s been put out on social media, and we have not had any complaints filed.”

On Facebook on Tuesday, Seely’s mother — Teresa Seely — posted a photo of her son’s face that was allegedly taken after the incident.

She wrote, “Last night, we found out that our son was a victim of a hazing incident at Alpha Chi Rho Fraternity at Central Michigan University in the fall. This is a picture of what they did to him. He has a deadly peanut allergy and they rubbed peanut butter on his face while he was passed out.”

She said that “he could have been killed,” saying he was treated at the campus health clinic and “luckily he is still alive.” She also said that Seely carries Benadryl tablets and an Epi-pen at all times, adding that she had notified the school as well as campus and local police.

A spokesman for Central Michigan University’s Campus Police tells PEOPLE they are aware of the allegations but will not be conducting an investigation because the site of the alleged incident was off-campus.

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Both Smith and the campus police confirmed that the school spoke with the student’s mother on Wednesday and informed her of next steps.

“The university — both campus police and the administration — reached out to the involved parent, and she has been directed on how to make a formal complaint and report with both the university and the Mt. Pleasant Police Department,” the campus police spokesman says.

The spokesman says the campus police and university were originally alerted to the alleged incident because of the Facebook post.

Theresa further spoke to the Detroit Free Press, explaining that her son has since transferred from Central Michigan University. She said that although the alleged incident happened in October, he only revealed it to them this week.

“We thought we were sending our child off to school in a safe environment, and obviously that wasn’t the case,”she told the paper. “He could have died from this. He has a deadly peanut allergy.”

Smith tells PEOPLE that Alpha Chi Rho has not been a recognized fraternity at Central Michigan University since 2011, when they were removed for hazing. She added that they appealed the decision last year, but were denied.

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She says that, pending the conduction of and results from a police investigation, any CMU students involved would potentially be subject to conduct charges.

Alpha Chi Rho National Fraternity did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.

Teresa Seely also did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but the family’s attorney, Dan Damman, says the Seelys “want to bring awareness to the fact that this could still be happening on college campuses.”

The family wants to “bring awareness to parents to spark a conversation with their kids who are away at college and really bring to light through universities that this is still something that is a problem,” Damman says.

He tells PEOPLE, “This young man really put his trust and his faith into these people that were supposed to be his friends.”

College Student with Severe Allergy Allegedly Hazed with Peanut Butter: "He Could Have Been Killed"

The Steve Hewlett I knew: a tough journalist, a fearless chronicler of the illness that killed him

Steve Hewlett became a household name over the past few months for talking about his cancer intimately and frankly to Eddie Mair on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme and for his diaries, which appeared in the Observer. At first I found it hard to reconcile how Steve was talking with the way he’d approached his life and work on Radio 4’s The Media Show, where I was his producer from 2009 to 2013.

It was an extraordinary time in media history, with stories of phone hacking and a BBC director general resigning. Steve Hewlett had always wanted to find the story, not be the story, and he was wary of “human interest”. But here he was on PM talking of himself with the same clarity and fascination as if he were a breaking story, with the scoop on his own condition. Suddenly it made sense. He was an utterly fearless interviewer and now he was turning that fearlessness on himself.

Steve made his name in investigative journalism on television and had been presenting The Media Show for a year when I first met him. We went for a pint and compared notes on what was going well and what might be changed. I had to get up to Steve’s speed on what he already knew, and find new subjects he didn’t know about, to test him, keep pushing him and show how wide the remit of this new programme could be.

Over the next few years, his scoops ranged from phone hacking and press regulation to who knew what, and when, about Jimmy Savile. On air he was dauntingly impartial, as hard on his friends, contacts and colleagues as on anyone else. It was gruelling at times, but Steve had the stamina of an ox.

The Media Show wasn’t Panorama, where he’d famously handled Martin Bashir’s interview with Princess Diana, and Steve was doubtful at first of radio and the impact it had, compared to television.

He was still developing his voice as a presenter of a live programme, rather than an expert answering someone else’s questions on his favourite subjects. But he hit his stride as we broke stories, and he enjoyed it even more when this rolled into appearances on Radio 4’s Today programme, which turned virtually into a residency during the phone-hacking scandals, the News of the World debacle and the Leveson inquiry.

I remember getting a call from Steve almost incoherent with excitement when he had just been phoned by someone at the News of the World, from the meeting where its closure was being announced. Steve made it to a studio to take part in the PM programme within the hour, exhilarated to be the one in the know, first with the inside story.

He was a great teacher. He impressed on me the importance of knowing the industry’s regulations, to see who was bending the rules, and of working out who had a strategy and who was being merely tactical. I often catch myself saying “causation or correlation?” and realise that’s a mantra from Steve, picked up when he snorted at a piece of research that claimed to show watching TV was bad for children, without demonstrating the link.

Steve pushed me and our assistant producer hard, but he always pushed himself harder. Especially in the first years of The Media Show, when it was live at lunchtime, I would arrive before 7.30am to find him already working on something in his office.

Often the door would stay closed for a confidential call. Later, as he came to trust me, it would be left open. Sometimes his tone would be intense, hushed, focused, and I’d not know who it was until after he hung up.

Sometimes it was altogether warmer, lighter and tinged with laughter, and I knew he was talking to one of his teenage sons, a holiday moment on a busy programme day. This would prompt him to tell stories about the other areas of his life, his weekends of refereeing rugby in Harpenden and his adventures in student politics, what he was doing at their age.

It was a glimpse of the side of him listeners eventually got to know much better in recent months. When I asked, he said it felt so natural to talk openly to Eddie Mair about his cancer, he couldn’t understand why anyone thought it was remarkable. Anyone who heard Steve, or read his diaries in the Observer, came to appreciate just how remarkable he was.

The Steve Hewlett I knew: a tough journalist, a fearless chronicler of the illness that killed him

NHS nurse killed himself after losing his job, inquest told

An award-winning nurse who died after setting himself on fire outside Kensington Palace suffered a “mental breakdown” over how his NHS employers handled his dismissal, an inquest heard.

Amin Abdullah, 41, died on 9 February last year close to the London home of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge after being sacked from Charing Cross hospital where he worked as a charge nurse.

An inquest into his death on Monday heard how he had previously attempted to take his own life and had told a patient in the unit where he was being treated he was going to set himself on fire.

Giving evidence at Westminster coroner’s court, his partner, Terry Skitmore, said Abdullah slipped into a depressive state during a disciplinary investigation which began in September 2015 and after he subsequently lost his job at Imperial College healthcare trust.

Skitmore said Abdullah, who “lived for the job”, was a “caring” and “dedicated nurse” and “struggled to understand what he was being disciplined for”.

The inquest heard how he had written a letter for another colleague caught up in a complaint made by a patient “to show how she could respond”, resulting in him getting embroiled in the issue.

Skitmore said Abdullah, after initial meetings and the investigation, did not hear anything about the disciplinary “for many weeks” and put in a grievance regarding the delays in a bid to get some answers.

On 21 December 2015 he was handed an instant dismissal on the grounds the letter he had written to support his colleague was “untrue”.

Skitmore said the delays in the disciplinary process eventually led to the mental breakdown of his Malaysian-born partner, who grew up in an orphanage and became a British citizen in 2009.

Under questioning, Skitmore said: “The disciplinary and additionally the 10 weeks of ignoring him caused him to have a mental breakdown and caused him to do what he did. I have got to live the rest of my life with that, and I do not want anyone else to go through that.”

Holding up a picture of his partner smiling on holiday in Spain, he described him as the “happiest man in the world”, adding: “Seven months later I’ve got a pot of ashes with candles beside it. They have lost a magnificent nurse and I have lost a magnificent partner.”

Skitmore also revealed in a statement read out by the coroner, Dr Shirley Radcliffe, that Abdullah had told him his mother had killed herself through self-immolation, but that a friend of his partner said she may have jumped in a river.

The inquest heard how on 27 January last year Abdullah was voluntarily admitted to St Charles mental health unit, after attempting to take his own life.

Abdullah had lodged an appeal against his dismissal in January 2016 and a hearing date had been set for 11 February.

The inquest heard how on 8 February Abdullah had been allowed to leave the unit to go to collect a suit ahead of the impending hearing. He had at points during his time in the care of the hospital been placed on observation and had been given 15-minute escorted cigarette breaks because of the risk deemed by staff.

He had also told another patient at one point that he intended to go out the following day and “have sex and set himself on fire” – something he denied when it was later put to him by a doctor.

Consultant psychiatrist Anna Higgitt said the unit took into account things he was saying to people which “varied at times”, when making the decision to extend his unescorted leave to one hour.

She said “a lot of the time he was planning for the future” and had told staff he would find a job somewhere else, and ahead of the hearing had even been out to have a haircut.

“He wanted from the start to have more freedom than we offered. We negotiated and he stuck to what we agreed. Up until he did not come back – he stuck to it really well,” she told the inquest.

The inquest is expected to last three days.

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123.
  In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.

NHS nurse killed himself after losing his job, inquest told

NHS trust criticised for underestimating risk posed by patients who killed people

An inquiry has criticised an NHS mental health trust for underestimating the risk of violence posed by patients who went on to carry out killings, two of which could have been prevented. Sussex Partnership NHS foundation trust has been criticised for not taking more seriously the families of disturbed patients who pleaded for help because they feared that their relative would commit violence.

The review of 10 homicides that occurred between 2010 and 2015 included the death of 79-year-old Donald Lock on the A24 near Worthing in Sussex in July 2015 after his car collided with that of Matthew Daley, who stabbed him 39 times.

An independent review of the trust’s handling of patients involved in the cases has found that it did not always learn from mistakes and on occasion “severely underestimated” the risk presented by certain patients. It was criticised for misjudging the risk posed in seven of the 10 killings.

In several cases, the process was said to be “inadequate and the risk posed by the service user went unrecognised or was severely underestimated”. Some diagnoses were acknowledged as flawed, yet were not changed even when patients carried out a fresh offence. “Sometimes service users made threats to kill others, but no further action – for example informing the police or warning the person threatened – was taken,” the report said.

The experts concluded that two of the 10 killlings could have been avoided, though they did not say which. The two did not include Lock’s death, for which 36-year-old Daley – who had a history of psychiatric problems including psychosis and who claimed diminished responsibility at his trial – was convicted of manslaughter.

The trust has already admitted that it “got things wrong” in Daley’s case and should have carried out a formal assessment of his mental state. Lock’s family say that he would “still be here today” if trust staff had done their job properly. Daley’s trial heard that his father warned doctors that unless his son received proper care for his condition, he would “hurt someone or worse”.

Colm Donaghy, the trust’s chief executive, apologised for incidents “which had devastating consequences for those affected. I realise this [review] may bring back painful memories for them. I also understand that some, if not all, will feel angry about our services. On behalf of the trust, I want to extend my sincere apology and condolences”.

A major NHS report earlier this month found that the number of killings by patients being treated for mental health problems is falling, probably as a result of improved NHS care. Patients with schizophrenia, psychosis or other disorders committed a total of 870 homicides across the UK between 2004 and 2014, which was just over one in ten (11%) of all killings in that time. Such homicides resulted in 67 deaths in 2014.

Sophie Corlett, director of external relations at the mental health charity Mind, said the NHS needed to do more to help those who feared that an unwell relative might harm themselves or others. “It’s vital that people are taken seriously when they say they are approaching crisis and ask for support. We still hear of too many cases where people have been turned away despite asking for help,” she said.

“If people don’t get support when they’re at their most unwell and vulnerable, there can be tragic consequences for people themselves, and sometimes – mercifully rarely – for others too. The lesson of this report is that these consequences can and should have been avoided.”

The trust jointly commissioned the review with NHS England to help it improve its handling of patients judged a risk to themselves or others.

NHS trust criticised for underestimating risk posed by patients who killed people

Mother of teenager who killed himself appeals for kindness online

A mother whose teenage son took his own life after being the victim of bullying that began over a computer game has said everyone has a collective responsibility to prevent other young lives being lost.

In an open letter, Lucy Alexander said her son Felix, 17, was so damaged by the abuse, isolation and unkindness he had experienced before his death that he did not realise anyone at his school cared about him.

The sixth-form student, from Worcester, was pronounced dead after being hit by a train near the city on 27 April.

An inquest heard the “kind and caring” teenager with a bright future had moved to Pershore high school after experiencing difficulties at a previous school. Three weeks after his death, hundreds attended his funeral and there was standing room only because the church was so full.

In her letter published in the Worcester News, Alexander, who also has a daughter Charlotte, 22, and a son Ben, 21, said she was not writing for sympathy but for the other children like Felix who were also being bullied.

The bullying had begun, she told the Sun, when her son was just 10 and classmates at the fee-paying King’s school where he had previously been a pupil teased him because he was not allowed to play the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It spiralled from there and he later became the victim of online abuse.

She said of her son in her letter: “His confidence and self-esteem had been eroded over a long period of time by the bullying behaviour he experienced in secondary education.

“It began with unkindness and social isolation and over the years, with the advent of social media, it became cruel and overwhelming. People who had never even met Felix were abusing him over social media and he found that he was unable to make and keep friends as it was difficult to befriend the most ‘hated’ boy in the school.

Felix’s family have been fundraising for Place2Be, a children’s mental health charity which provides in-school support and training for emotional wellbeing. Photograph: Family handout/PA

“He did make friends at his new school and the teaching staff found him to be bright, kind and caring. He was however so badly damaged by the abuse, isolation and unkindness he had experienced, that he was unable to see just how many people truly cared for him.”

The letter urged children to be kind always and to report bullying if they saw it. It said: “Be that one person prepared to stand up to unkindness. You will never regret being a good friend. I have been told that ‘everyone says things they don’t mean on social media’. Unkindness is dismissed as ‘banter’ and because they cannot see the effect of their words they do not believe there is one.”

She also said that teachers should be looking out for the signs of children struggling, especially if they were always sitting alone during lunch. Her final appeal was to parents. She said: “Please take an interest in what your children do online. We don’t like to think that our children could be responsible for being cruel to another child, but I have been shocked by the ‘nice’ kids who were responsible in part for Felix’s anguish. Even if they only say something horrible once, that will not be the only person who will have said something that week.”

Parents should encourage their children to self-edit and to use social media for kindness, she said. “On several occasions we removed all form of social media from Felix as it was causing so much distress, but that just isolated him further,” she said.

“Our lives have been irrevocably damaged by the loss of our wonderful son; please don’t let it happen to any other family.”

The family have been fundraising for Place2Be, a children’s mental health charity which provides in-school support and training for emotional wellbeing.

The charity’s director of communications, Jennie Meadows, said: “We are inspired by Lucy Alexander’s commitment to bringing about positive change from such a tragic and heartbreaking situation.”

She said the money raised following the death of Felix would help the charity reach more young people. She said: “The support that we have received as an organisation in memory of Felix is both overwhelming and unprecedented.”

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here

Mother of teenager who killed himself appeals for kindness online

Indonesia dismisses study showing forest fire haze killed more than 100,000 people

Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean authorities have dismissed research that suggested smoky haze from catastrophic forest fires in Indonesia last year caused 100,000 deaths. Some even contend the haze caused no serious health problems, but experts say those assertions contradict well-established science.

Last year’s fires in Sumatra and the Indonesian part of Borneo were the worst since 1997, burning about 261,000 hectares of forests and peatland and sending haze across the region for weeks. Many were deliberately set by companies to clear land for palm oil and pulpwood plantations.

The study in the journal Environmental Research Letters by Harvard and Columbia researchers estimated the amount of health-threatening fine particles, often referred to as PM2.5, released by the fires that burned from July to October and tracked their spread across south-east Asia using satellite observations.

In Indonesia, a spokesman for the country’s disaster mitigation agency said the research “could be baseless or they have the wrong information”. Indonesia officially counted 24 deaths from the haze including people killed fighting the fires.

Singapore’s Ministry of Health said short-term exposure to haze will generally not cause serious health problems. The study was “not reflective of the actual situation”, it said, and the overall death rate hadn’t changed last year.

In Malaysia, health minister Subramaniam Sathasivam said officials are still studying the research, which is “computer-generated, not based on hard data”. “People have died but to what extent the haze contributed to it, it’s hard to say,” he said. “If an 80-year-old fellow with high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problem and exposure to haze died, what did he die of? This is a hell of a difficult question to answer.”

The dry season fires are an annual irritant in Indonesia’s relations with its neighbours Singapore and Malaysia and the finding of a huge public health burden has the potential to worsen those strains. The 2015 burning season, which was worsened by El Niño’s dry conditions, also tainted Indonesia’s reputation globally by releasing a vast amount of atmosphere-warming carbon.

The Indonesian government has stepped up efforts to prosecute companies and individuals who set fires and also strengthened its fire-fighting response. This year’s fires have affected a smaller area in large part due to unseasonal rains.

Jamal Hisham Hashim, research fellow with the International Institute for Global Health in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said governments should not dismiss the study even if the estimated deaths are arguable.

He said decades of air pollution research that followed London’s killer smog in 1952 has established the relationship between fine particulate matter and premature deaths, particularly in people with existing respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

“The pollution level that occurred during the haze is severe enough to cause premature deaths. That is indisputable,” he said. “The study is a wake-up call. We need to be shaken; we have become too complacent with the haze.”

Joel Schwartz, an author of the study who is regarded by his peers as one of the world’s top experts on the health effects of air pollution, said authorities in the affected countries have not offered any details of how they reached conclusions critical of the study.

During the haze, Malaysia suffered air pollution at 10 times the level that the World Health Organization says causes premature deaths, he said, while Singapore’s claim that short-term exposure does not have serious effects is factually incorrect.
The Singaporean statement that its death rate was unchanged from 2014 did not demonstrate anything, Schwartz said, due to a worldwide trend for declining mortality. The study’s premise is that deaths are higher than what they would be without the haze rather than a comparison to a particular year, he said.

Separately, Singapore’s health ministry did not respond to a question on why heart disease and pneumonia, both of which can be brought to fatal conclusion by fine particle exposure, had increased as a percentage of deaths in 2015.

Malaysia, meanwhile, does not measure PM2.5 in its air pollution index but has been planning to from next year.

Half a dozen scientists with expertise in air pollution who reviewed the study for the Associated Press said its methodology was sound and its conclusions reasonable. Some cautioned that the estimates of 91,600 deaths in Indonesia, another 6,500 in Malaysia and 2,200 in Singapore are invariably uncertain because aspects of the modelling rely on assumptions and the actual figures could be higher or lower.

The study considered only the health impact on adults and restricts itself to the effects of fine particles rather than all toxins that would be in the smoke.

Philip Hopke, director of the Center for Air Resources Engineering and Science at New York state’s Clarkson University, said air pollution studies have to overcome several challenges because “no one who gets sick or dies comes to the doctor or hospital with a clear label that says airborne particles or ozone did this.” Another problem is the studies typically assume that fine particles are the sole cause of illness or death but smoke from fires contains ozone and a variety of volatile compounds that would also affect health.

“A major event like occurred here is extremely likely to have caused adverse health outcomes in terms of both sickness and deaths,” he said.

Indonesia dismisses study showing forest fire haze killed more than 100,000 people

9/11 health crisis: death toll from illness nears number killed on day of attacks

The death toll among those sickened by the toxic dust and ash of Ground Zero will within as little as five years exceed the number of people killed on the day of the 9/11 attacks, experts say.

As those who lost loved ones at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and on Flight 93 gather for Sunday’s 15th anniversary of the terror attacks that killed almost 3,000 people, a post-9/11 health crisis is growing.

At least 1,000 people – and probably many more – have died often lingering, painful deaths resulting from illnesses related to their exposure to debris that spread from the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers in downtown Manhattan. More than 37,000 are officially recognised as sick.

Calls are growing for a new monument to be added to the World Trade Center site, to pay tribute to those who have died or become sick since 9/11 because of toxic exposure.

“Within the next five years we will be at the point where more people have died from World Trade Center-related illnesses than died from the immediate impact of the attacks,” said Dr Jim Melius, a doctor at the New York State Laborers Union who also advises the White House on worker health, chairs the steering committee overseeing the government health program for 9/11 responders, and is a member of the advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch.

“There are a lot of people who are very, very ill with lung disease who will see at least 10 years taken from their normal life span,” he said, “and we are already seeing many more premature deaths occurring, and among younger people, from the cancers. There is going to be a new generation of widows and widowers.”

In 2001, government officials, most prominently the then head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Christine Todd Whitman, assured those in lower Manhattan in the days after the attacks that the air was safe.

In an interview with the Guardian this weekend, Whitman said for the first time that in hindsight she had been mistaken. She apologised to those affected by the toxic debris.

After al-Qaida terrorists flew hijacked passenger jets into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, the towers collapsed. Clouds of fumes and debris billowed out over New York City. Of 2,977 people killed in the attacks, 2,753 died at the World Trade Center.

The debris left by the twin towers, the main concentration of which became known as “the pile”, contained asbestos, lead, glass, heavy metals, concrete, poisonous gases, oil and other dangerous substances that mixed with exploding jet fuel, the contents of hundreds of offices and dead bodies to fill the air and cover the area around the site.

“It was disgusting,” said Merita Zejnuni, 52, a cleaner who was working a few blocks from Ground Zero in the offices of banking giant Goldman Sachs on the morning of 9/11. “It coated your mouth and your throat. I was covered in it – I looked like a ghost.”

Zejnuni developed a violent, chronic cough and was recently found to have breast cancer. This weekend, speaking to the Guardian, she gave her first interview. Her lawyer, Troy Rosasco, said Zejnuni only found out last month she could apply for compensation. Rosasco believes thousands of other people are sick or dying as a result of exposure around Ground Zero, away from the public eye.

“There is a general consensus that people down there got huge exposure,” he said, “but many don’t even know why they are sick.”

Last month, researchers at Stony Brook University announced that cognitive impairment, a leading risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, was being detected among first responders who went to Ground Zero on and around 9/11.

“That’s scary news,” said Rosasco. “I have probably gotten 50 calls in the last two days from people who are really frightened about that.”

In 2010, after years of political battle, Congress passed the $ 4bn Zadroga Act – named for a police captain who worked on rescue efforts at Ground Zero and died in 2006 after developing breathing problems – to cover the health costs of those poisoned by the debris and fumes of 9/11. Late last year, it agreed to extend the act’s provisions for 75 years. There is a separate, official Victim Compensation Fund.

In 2011, the federal World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP) was established. It has 75,000 registered members, 87% of whom worked on rescue, recovery and clean-up. The rest are New York residents or workers. A total of 1,140 registered members have died since the program was created in 2011, WTCHP spokeswoman Christy Spring said.

“Because of the way the legislation was written,” she said, “there is an understanding that there is a link between the exposure and the illnesses people are suffering from.”

Causes of death are not recorded by the WTCHP. There is no central record for how many people died between 2001 and 2011 from illnesses linked to 9/11 fumes and debris, Spring said, nor any way of knowing exactly how many other people have died without any record of their illnesses having been caused by exposure near Ground Zero.

Melius said: “We know a significant number of people died before the WTCHP was set up; it’s likely to be in the hundreds. There are also probably hundreds of people outside the program who are sick and may have died.”

The WTCHP has certified 37,000 people as suffering from serious respiratory or digestive illnesses, cancer, or a combination. Most of those registered are from New York City and 82% are male.

Spring said: “There are health conditions covered in the program that will take years to develop and we don’t think the cancers we are seeing now is the end of it. It’s such an unprecedented disaster. It’s mind-boggling to think not just about the day but about the ripple effect on people’s health.”

The Manhattan borough president, Gale Brewer, told the Guardian she had “heard very high numbers” of people were at risk of dying from exposure to World Trade Center-related toxins.

“Many more than 3,000 or 4,000,” she said. “It’s very sad. I believe it will eclipse the number who died on 9/11 itself, because so many people were on the pile, or came to help, and so many people worked in the area. We are going to be dealing with this for years and years.”

In 2014, Brewer wrote to New York governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, asking them to approve a plan to build a monument to those sickened and killed since 9/11, to be installed near where the towers stood.

The area now hosts the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and is dominated by monuments built where each tower stood and engraved with the names of those who died in the atrocity.

Brewer is lobbying for a competition to design a separate monument for those who have been sickened. It will not have names, because of lack of clarity about cause of death in all cases and because it will also be designed to offer solace to those still living but sick, she said.

“It needs to be universal,” she said.

She has had no formal response from either Christie or Cuomo. But when she collared Cuomo at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia this summer, she said, he told her: “Sounds good.”

Brewer is hopeful of adding the monument before the 16th anniversary of 9/11.

Jerrold Nadler, the US congressman whose district includes the World Trade Center site, said of the post-9/11 health crisis: “It’s ghastly, it’s horrible, the people will die early and I feel very frustrated because it was preventable.”

9/11 health crisis: death toll from illness nears number killed on day of attacks

Dr Ubani: bereaved son sued for criticising doctor who killed his father

The case triggered disappointment from British authorities, who had sought to have Ubani extradited to face criminal costs in this nation, but failed to secure co-operation from Germany.

The pensioner’s sons believe he ought to be barred from operating and four many years in the past confronted him at a medical conference, looking for an explanation for their father’s death.

Rory Gray stated they sought out the doctor since they had been shocked that he was speaking at a conference advertising his cosmetic surgical treatment the day after he had failed to attend the GMC hearing which stopped him from training in Britain.

Mr Gray, 49, mentioned he and his brother Stuart, a GP from Worcestershire, raised the matter, saying “You have received no proper to communicate about healthcare items. You happen to be grossly incompetent,” and describing Ubani as a “charlatan and a killer” prior to conference staff had them removed.

For the duration of the confrontation, Rory Gray muttered to his brother that Ubani was “an animal” – a remark which he says would not have been heard by other folks.

The scientist, who operates in Germany, believes Ubani was not even aware of the remark until he presented a transcript of the incident when the medical professional tried to sue him above the other remarks.

In a claim lodged at Lindau District Court in Bavaria, Ubani is suing Mr Gray for reduction of a skilled fee. He claims that as a consequence of the confrontation, he was forced to depart the conference in Bavaria and forego his speaking fee and dinner.

He is claiming 1,148 euros (948) for loss of his speaking fee and two,250 euros (£1,858) for legal fees.

Ubani also wants Mr Gray to sign a letter saying he will not in long term use the words “he is an animal”.

The medical professional first attempted to sue the Grays in August 2010 above the incident, and experimented with to look for an injunction stopping them from coming inside 550 metres of him. The German courts ruled that they were free of charge to refer to Ubani as a “charlatan and a killer” but must not use the word animal to describe him.

A yr later on, Ubani lost an appeal in Munich Substantial Court.

But last September, Ubani wrote to Rory Gray, demanding that he create a letter promising to spend him cash if he ever referred to him as an animal in potential. Mr Gray said he ignored the letter, and now faces a trial which is due to start up coming week.

Mr Gray, 49, a scientist, who performs for the German weather workplace, informed The Telegraph: “I have no intention of calling him an animal but of program I’m not going to write to him – this is the man who came into my dad’s residence and killed him.”

Public concern about the death of their father, in February 2008, triggered adjustments in the way out-of-hrs providers are run, to increase oversight of locum medical professionals, and the organizations who use them.

It was a single of a string of circumstances which place pressure on regulators to introduce adjustments, which came in final week, providing the GMC powers to check out that doctors from Europe can communicate English to a protected common.

Last week regulators wrote to the Gray brothers, thanking them for their operate campaigning for modifications to the law.

The letter, penned by Tanja Schubert, the GMC’s head of European and International Affairs, says: “It is four years given that we very first voiced worries about the law and referred to as for it to be transformed to shield individuals.

“It has taken a massive energy to carry about this change and we are acutely mindful we could not have accomplished this without your support.”

Till last week, the GMC was not permitted to inquire medical professionals from Europe to provide evidence they have the necessary knowledge of English to do their jobs.

The new law indicates that if the GMC has issues, they can refuse to grant medical doctors a licence to work right here.

The legal alterations close a loophole which has existed since 1983 in European Union guidelines which let citizens from other member states work freely in Britain.

Beneath the existing system, more than 25,000 medical doctors from countries inside of the European Union have registered to function in the NHS with no any checks on their language abilities.

Right up until now, physicians from Europe who place patients at threat could only be removed from the health care register soon after incidents are uncovered.

Dr Ubani: bereaved son sued for criticising doctor who killed his father

More than 50 elderly individuals killed by hip substitute operations after NHS ignored warnings cement was unsafe, former chief healthcare officer finds

Sir Liam, who was chief medical officer from 1990 to 2010, explained advice that advised monitoring the cardiac wellness of sufferers before hip operations was getting ignored.

“The orthopaedic surgery community seems to have concluded that the benefits of cement outweigh the hazards,” he stated.

“The NHS needs to look at when it is genuinely needed to use cement and when an operation may possibly be successful without having making use of it. In somecountries they don’t use it at all, it varies a whole lot across the world but in Britain it has usually been regular process.

“We want to see this entire question about the use of cement opened up once more and further research and evaluation of the dangers.”

In 2009, the now defunct Nationwide Patient Safety Company raised considerations about the use of cement during partial hip replacements for fractured femurs, and issued advice to the NHS on how to minimise the risks.

It discovered that 26 individuals had died and 6 suffered extreme harm as a consequence of “Bone Cement Implantation Syndrome”.

The Medicines and Healthcare Goods Regulatory Agency also obtained reviews of deaths and advised surgeons they ought to reduce hazards through “patient evaluation and revised anaesthetic and surgical techniques”.

But most of the deaths occurred right after 2009, suggesting that the implementation of recommendations was “suboptimal” the staff concluded in an post in the on the internet journal BMJ Open.

A spokesman for NHS England stated the NHS was functioning with patient safety groups and the Royal colleges to tackle the dilemma.

More than 50 elderly individuals killed by hip substitute operations after NHS ignored warnings cement was unsafe, former chief healthcare officer finds

Sons of British man killed by German locum GP shed case at European court

Daniel Ubani was on his very first Uk shift when he accidentally gave David Gray an overdose of diamorphine. Photograph: Anthony Collins Solicitors/PA

The sons of a man accidentally killed by a German out-of-hrs physician on his 1st United kingdom shift have misplaced a claim at the European court of human rights that German authorities did not offer an effective investigation into their father’s death.

Rory and Stuart Gray had said their rights had been denied when the German justice system refused to enable the doctor’s extradition to face trial in open court in the United Kingdom. But seven judges at the Strasbourg court rejected their case, saying German authorities had acted in accordance to domestic law.

The court also dismissed the brothers’ assertion that their legitimate interests had been not respected. A single of the judges, Ann Electrical power-Forde, from Ireland, did however raise the query of regardless of whether the authorities ought to have informed Gray’s household that Daniel Ubani, the GP involved, had been convicted in his personal nation in March 2009 of having triggered David Gray’s death by negligence, sentenced to a nine-month suspended prison sentence and give a fine of €5,000, virtually £4,050.

She explained that although there had been no breach of the European convention on human rights, there may in potential need to have to be clarification as to whether subsequent-of-kin had a appropriate to know when criminal proceedings had been ended by a state’s authorities.

Criminal proceedings were opened against the doctor in the United Kingdom and the German choice to prosecute, primarily based on evidence from British police who investigated the death, shocked and angered Uk investigators as effectively as Gray’s loved ones. Ministers have been also concerned that Ubani’s conviction took place without having him appearing in an open court.

Ubani killed David Gray on sixteen February 2008 in his house in Cambridgeshire right after getting recruited by a private agency to operate as a locum medical doctor.

Treating Gray for acute soreness, the physician puzzled two medication and mistakenly injected a tenfold overdose of the painkiller diamorphine.

The brothers had complained that German authorities denied their father’s human rights by not conducting a correct investigation into his death and refusing to allow Ubani’s extradition to Britain.

They also stay furious at what they see as a cover-up by Eurojust, the EU’s judicial co-operation unit, and the United kingdom, as nicely as Germany, in excess of precisely what went on in the months foremost up to the German prosecution.

Sons of British man killed by German locum GP shed case at European court

Three-week-previous woman virtually killed by meningitis from loved ones cat

The promotions assistant of Winsham, Somerset, mentioned: “It seemed this kind of an unlikely lead to.

“The medical professionals mentioned she was only the 39th man or woman in the world identified to picked up that distinct strain of meningitis.

“She was just 3 weeks outdated and extremely vulnerable. It was unreal and quite scary also.

“Chesney even now lives with my mum and there’s no danger to be concerned about any more from them being in speak to. In reality they follow every other all around all the time when we pay a visit to.”

Miss Dodd mentioned alarm bells started out ringing when Sparkle would not quit crying when she was three weeks old.

She explained: “I tried everything to calm her down, but she wouldn’t cease yelling. She was extremely hot and negative-tempered.

“After a handful of hrs I decided to trust my mothers’ instinct and consider her her to hospital.”

At Musgrove Park hospital, medical doctors took her daughter away for some emergency exams.

She stated: “It broke my heart to see her hooked up to so a lot of wires. When they told me she had meningitis, I felt sick.

“It did not make any sense – Sparkle didn’t have a rash and I hadn’t observed her shying away from vivid lights. She had an really unusual kind – there had been just 39 situations previously, which actually took me by shock.

“I was advised that she could have died inside hours if I hadn’t brought her in.”

Medical professionals traced the supply of the meningitis to Chesney.

Miss Dodd mentioned: “They believed that it was transferred via Chesney’s saliva. I’d been mindful not to depart them alone together, but Chesney have to have licked Sparkle’s milk bottle whilst my back was turned.

“I was consumed with guilt – I felt as if I hadn’t stored a mindful ample eye on issues, and that Sparkle’s sickness was all my fault. I sent Chesney to go and dwell with my mom.”

Soon after a month in hospital, Sparkle came home and has because gone on to make a complete recovery. She is right now a content, healthy toddler who is unafraid of animals.

Miss Dodd said: “I’ve been advised it’s properly secure for Sparkle to devote time with Chesney, which is a relief because they’ve truly become very best buddies.”

Nowadays, Miss Dodd is keen to advise new dad and mom to investigation early signs of meningitis in children, which contain soreness, mottled skin and unusually cold hands and feet or shivering.

She said: “I did not know quite considerably about meningitis – I usually believed the only factor I should be concerned about was a rash. But there are plenty of other signs also, and realizing them can make all the variation in helping to catch it early.

“I try not to believe about how close I came to dropping Sparkle. I am so grateful that she’s all appropriate now.”

Three-week-previous woman virtually killed by meningitis from loved ones cat

Female killed herself more than advantages reduce, says mental health watchdog

Miss DE was informed she would lose her £94.25 incapacity advantage and be put on £67.50 jobseeker’s allowance rather. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

A mental overall health watchdog has discovered that a girl with a background of pressure-relevant depression killed herself simply because her advantages had been lower following a work evaluation.

The Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland stated the woman in her early 50s took her own life less than a month right after an Atos assessor gave her zero points in a function capability evaluation and docked her weekly rewards by virtually thirty%.

Stating that many health professionals had been worried about the technique, the commission explained it could locate no other purpose why the lady, named only as Miss DE, would kill herself at her home on New Year’s Eve 2011.

She had no history of suicidal behaviour, was hoping to return to operate and was about to get married.

Soon after an exhaustive investigation, like interviews with all the mental well being pros involved in her treatment method, her GP, pals and neighborhood welfare rights team, and interviewing the Atos and Division of Work and Pensions employees concerned in her case, the commission concluded the assesssment was to blame.

Dr Donald Lyons, the chief executive of the MWC, mentioned: “This lady had a whole lot to look forward to. She was receiving married. She was becoming treated. She was undertaking voluntary operate. She had a good social network. There was not anything else which we could identify that would lead us to think that there was any other element in her daily life that resulted in her choice to end her lifestyle.”

In its stinging report on Miss DE’s case published on Wednesday, the commission named for the DWP to overhaul its rigid operate capability assessments procedures by generating them more responsive to folks with mental well being histories.

The overhaul need to incorporate making it program that health care reviews are collected in psychological health assessments, that at least two sources of data are employed and that the person’s GP and psychiatrist need to be told of the “potentially difficult situation” they faced.

After disclosing that a senior NHS official had alerted the MWC to Miss DE’s case, the commission explained it had investigated because it knew of “numerous reviews, analysis and widespread public debate on this subject”.

“One of the factors we undertook this investigation is since the concerns recognized may have an effect on many folks in equivalent circumstances,” it said, including: “A amount of clinicians had expressed concern about the influence on sufferers of this approach and reassessment.”

The MWC’s survey of Scottish psychiatrists located that 13% reported that at least one particular of their patients had attempted suicide soon after going by way of a function capability evaluation, and 75% of them said neither the DWP nor Atos had asked them to take element in the assessments or provide health care evidence about their sufferers.

In Miss DE’s situation, she was offered an hour-prolonged assessment by an Atos-employed physician for the DWP, but was not asked to complete a self-evaluation questionnaire. No proof was sought from her psychiatrist or her medical professional.

The Atos assessor concluded that Miss DE presented “no evidence that she has a significant disability of psychological health function”. She was told by letter on 9 December 2011 that she had scored zero points, soon after two unsuccessful attempts to phone her to make clear the choice.

A welfare rights officer then explained to Miss DE she would for that reason get rid of her incapacity advantage of £94.25 a week, and be place on £67.50 a week jobseeker’s allowance instead. The welfare rights employee explained Miss DE grew to become very upset and worried about paying out her mortgage loan.

The DWP stated it and its advisers had presently examined a lot of of the issues raised by the MWC, as had an independent tribunal and separate reviews, and they had made the decision its programs were largely robust and appropriate.

It extra that it would operate with Atos and stakeholder groups to enhance the way it informed claimants about the procedure, and its questionnaires, and would make certain that assessors made clear they did not have accessibility to their health care notes.

“DWP remains committed to maintaining their processes for collecting further proof under continual review – and will enhance these processes exactly where achievable,” the division told the MWC.

“It remains essential to retain a stability between the extra worth of additional evidence in any claim for Employment and Help Allowance and the demands on the time of GPs and other healthcare specialists.”

Female killed herself more than advantages reduce, says mental health watchdog

Authorities accused of cover-up in excess of death of patient killed by German GP

German physician Daniel Ubani. Photograph: Anthony Collins solicitors/PA

The household of David Gray, who was accidentally killed by a German medical doctor on his very first Uk shift as an out-of-hours GP, have accused British and German authorities and the EU’s judicial co-operation unit Eurojust of covering up particulars of the failed attempts to extradite the medical doctor 6 many years in the past.

Eurojust mentioned it would be against the public interest to publish them. One of Gray’s sons, Rory, who has failed in his most current attempt to create how Daniel Ubani was convicted in his own country rather than encounter criminal proceedings in the United kingdom, explained British prosecutors have been “complicit” with their German counterparts in keeping secret what had occurred.

Stephen Barclay, the MP for North East Cambridgeshire , the constituency in which David Gray lived, explained the family had been “badly let down” by choices to keep confidential the minutes of a meeting of Uk and Germanprosecutors held months soon after a furious row more than Germany’s handling of the case.

Rory Gray informed the Guardian: “The CPS is complicit with the Germans soon after their covert meeting held into the obstruction of the European arrest warrant and elimination of United kingdom justice. Germany wilfully acted to avoid the Uk applying Uk law in Britain.

“Germany licensed Ubani … who killed my father, then acted to cover up its grievous health care regulatory failures by avoiding the United kingdom from holding a public trial. The CPS reaction has been to try to prevent this from surfacing. The CPS is impotent if a foreign prosecutor chooses to make them so.”

Ubani was convicted of causing death by negligence in Germany in 2009, a lot more than a yr after he killed 70-12 months-outdated Gray in Manea, Cambridgeshire, by a massive overdose of the painkiller diamorphine. He in no way appeared in court, was offered a 9-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay €5,000 (£4,200) legal charges. Britain’s European arrest warrant aimed at taking Ubani to Britain on a achievable manslaughter charge was formally rejected only following the Guardian broke the story.

Cambridgeshire police and prosecutors had not expected German authorities to consider action themselves. The Cambridgeshire coroner later stated Gray had been unlawfully killed and Ubani was struck off the United kingdom healthcare register in June 2010. He is even now a medical doctor in Germany.

The fresh accusations came following Rory Gray, who performs as a scientist for the German climate support, lost his attempt to persuade the European ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, to make Eurojust release meeting information.

She said the German and United kingdom members on the physique had refused to divulge the “situation-connected” minutes, choices by which Eurojust was bound.

Eurojust, primarily based in The Hague, , also mentioned disclosure would “undermine the public curiosity as regards … national investigations and prosecutions in which Eurojust assists” and break secrecy guidelines.

There has never ever been any public government report on the failed extradition, in contrast to investigations into the failures by health-related authorities in the case and massive alterations in the way out-of-hrs GP services are run and monitored and EU medical professionals are checked before becoming allowed to operate in Britain.

Rory Gray’s attempts to see minutes, which had been supported by Uk well being ministers, were dashed by the ombudsman closing her inquiry into Eurojust’s refusal to release information of the meeting, which had depended on the United kingdom promising confidentiality.

Both the United kingdom and German members at Eurojust desired continuing secrecy, although a veto by the German member alone would have been enough to stop publication.

Barclay mentioned the Gray loved ones “have been badly allow down by the continued refusal of officials to disclose what went wrong in the handling of their situation.

“This cover up compounds the authentic failure whereby my constituent was killed via health care incompetence, has meant that the guilty get together continues to escape justice, and the family members continue to be in the dark as to what the CPS and police did incorrect. It is challenging to see how this kind of a blatant lack of transparency is in the public curiosity.”

The CPS says it has accomplished all it can to support the Gray loved ones. It informed Cambridge MEP Robert Sturdy earlier this month: “There was no comprehensive explanation presented by German contingent at the Eurojust meeting, so none could be provided to the household.”

The CPS informed the Guardian it had “endeavoured to keep Mr Gray informed of concerns as far as possible in relation to this case and we comprehend his frustration, but there is tiny much more we can do to assist him at this stage.”

German prosecutors started out their personal criminal investigation in June 2008, just weeks after British authorities had asked for assistance. German law obliged them to do so against citizens suspected of involuntary manslaughter, even when the offence was committed abroad, explained a spokesman for the North Rhine Westphalia ministry of justice. “This did not, as a matter of principle, rule out the probability of proceedings by a foreign (British] body.”

Nevertheless, as soon as Ubani had been sentenced, extradition was out of the query. As to maintaining the Eurojust minutes secret, the spokesman said: “An application for inspection of files was in no way produced to the justice ministry of North-Rhine Westphalia. The justice ministry of North-Rhine Westphalia in no way ruled on this kind of an application. Eurojust alone is accountable for ruling on applications for file inspection relating to Eurojust’s processes.”

Ubani is pursuing legal action in Germany against Rory Gray and his brother Stuart, a GP, alleging they disrupted his look at a conference on plastic surgical treatment in Lindau, in 2010.

Authorities accused of cover-up in excess of death of patient killed by German GP