Horror stories on A.I.D.S. cases

Press, 17 March 1987, Page 46

Horror stories on A.I.D.S. cases

NZPA-PA London A woman drug addict with A.I.D.S. cut her wrists after her doctor refused to see her, it was claimed. The Terence Higgins Trust, giving details of “horror stories” of treatment given to some patients, said the woman approached her general practitioner for help in Dundee about six weeks earlier. A spokesman said she was told: “We don’t want you shits in here. You had better go off and cut your wrists because I am not going to help.” The patient “went away and did just that,” said the trust spokesman. She had not died but remained emotionally scarred. Richard Haigh, chairman of the trust’s steering committee, said: "I have met a man with A.I.D.S. whose house was firebombed by hostile neighbours. “I have met a mother whose son’s body was

dragged in a plastic bag down three flights of steps by the feet. It went bump, bump, bump down the stairs, and you can imagine what the mother felt.

“I saw a man in hospital whose bed linen — and he was incontinent at the time — had not been removed from the isolation room for two weeks and who had to stagger to the door of his room to collect the meals left outside for him.” The trust said that in another case in London last January, a doctor refused to arrange for the body of an A.I.D.S. victim to be taken away from the home where he died. The trust had to make the arrangements instead. Tony Whitehead, chairman of the trust’s board of directors, said the trust was now thinking of reporting some of the doctors involved to the General Medical Council for disciplinary action. “We want a test case,” he said.