Tag Archives: Scottish Government

Government, Health, Medical, Scotland

NHS drug bungles. Care home patients often receive ‘wrong’ medication…

ERRORS IN MEDICATION

Thousands of elderly care home patients are subjected to errors in their medication.

On any given day, seven out of ten residents are given wrongly administered drugs.

The errors, by care home staff, doctors and pharmacists, include giving the incorrect dosage, not giving drugs at the correct time or ensuring patients take their drugs.

Such mistakes can lead to adverse reactions, emergency hospital admissions and even death.

The Scottish Government’s Review of NHS Pharmaceutical care of Patients in the Community in Scotland noted that care homes residents have multiple ailments and complex drug regimes, but said:

… Seven out of ten residents receive some form of medication error each day.

Experts have agreed that action must be taken to address a ‘ticking time bomb’ as thousands of older patients face admission to care homes.

They said ‘poor medicines management’ is the reason for many errors and they called for regular input by pharmacists into patient care.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland has set up a working group to examine how pharmaceutical care in care homes could be improved.

Critics described the findings as ‘deeply worrying’ and called for urgent action to ensure the safety of patients.

A spokesperson for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said:

… Patients are extremely vulnerable when they transfer from one care setting to another and records do not always follow the patient or go to the community pharmacist.

… There is a need for sharing of information to one single electronic patient record.

According to the review, as the country’s population ages, and patients live longer with medical complications, there are likely to be ‘major challenges for pharmaceutical care in the future’.

After looking at the needs of residents in care homes, experts also found that most medication errors are caused by doctors or pharmacists.

The report found:

… The increasing dependency and multi-morbidity of residents, many with dementia, requires high quality pharmaceutical care, to meet the medication needs of individual residents.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society added that the ‘time bomb’ is one of demography, saying that we have increasing numbers of elderly people with several long-term conditions and, to accommodate this, there is a need to develop more integrated care solutions.

In response to criticism that errors are occurring so shockingly frequently, and that everyone must get round the table to work out how this may be sorted, a Scottish Government official said:

… We are looking at ways to improve pharmaceutical services by working with GPs, the NHS and professional bodies.

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Britain, Government, Libya, Scotland, United States

Megrahi’s release linked to £400m arms deal. Revelations continue to emerge…

THE LOCKERBIE BOMBER: ABDELBASET AL MEGRAHI

The release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, was linked to a £400 million arms deal with Libya, according to secret documents.

Following disclosures, obtained under Freedom of Information laws, the documents show ‘reprehensible’ connections between the Labour government that aimed to boost business and freeing the man convicted of Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity.

In an email communication between the then UK ambassador in Tripoli to the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, further details have emerged of how a prisoner transfer agreement was aimed to be signed once Libya had fulfilled its promises to buy an air defence system.

At the time of Megrahi’s release in 2009, Labour’s government under Gordon Brown insisted there was no link to ‘blood money’ trade deals with Colonel Gaddafi.

Megrahi, a Libyan, was convicted under Scots Law of killing 270 people by blowing up a US airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988. He was sent home early from Greenock prison on compassionate grounds because he had terminal prostate cancer. He died last year. Ministers have always insisted that his release from prison was a decision taken solely by the Scottish Government.

The email was sent by Sir Vincent Fean, then the UK’s most senior diplomat in Libya, to Mr Blair, ahead of his visit to Gaddafi in June 2008. Mr Blair, who quit Downing Street a year earlier, was being updated on the UK’s ongoing relations with the Libyan dictator.

Prior to this, Mr Blair met Gaddafi and his Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi in his infamous visit to Sirte in a desert tent. The meeting thrashed out a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on prisoner transfers just before BP announced the firm was investing £545 million to search for oil reserves in Libya believed to be worth £13 billion.

But according to the email, Mr Blair and Baghdadi agreed Libya would buy a missile defence system from MBDA, part-owned by BAE Systems. When he returned in June 2008 the Government appeared to see a chance for him to push for the arms deal to be sealed.

Sir Vincent Fean wrote:

… There is one bilateral issue which I hope TB (Tony Blair) can raise, as a legacy issue. On 29 May 07 in Sirte, he and Libya’s PM agreed that Libya would buy an air defence system (Jernas) from the UK (MBDA).

… One year on, MBDA are now back in Tripoli aiming to agree and sign the contract now – worth £400 million, and up to 2,000 jobs in the UK. We think we have Col Q’s (Gaddafi’s) goodwill for this contract. This issue can also be raised with Libya’s PM. It was PM Baghdadi who told the media on 29 May 07 that Libya would buy British.

… Linked (by Libya) is the issue of the 4 bilateral justice agreements about which TB signed an MoU with Baghdadi on 29 May. The MoU says they will be negotiated within the year: they have been. They are all ready for signature in London as soon as Libya fulfils its promise on Jernas.

The prisoner transfer agreement was signed in November 2008.

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary in Labour’s Government at the time of Megrahi’s release, said then it was ‘offensive’ to suggest it was linked to improving commercial relations with Libya.

On Sunday, Mandleson said:

… I was not aware of the correspondence covered in the FOI request.

A statement from Mr Blair’s side said the email did not show the UK government was trying to link the defence deal and Megrahi. A spokesperson for Mr Blair, said:

… Actually it shows the opposite – that any linkage was from the Libyan side. As far as we’re aware there was no linkage on the UK side. What the email in fact shows is that, consistent with what we have always said, it was made clear to the then Libyan leader that the release of Megrahi was a matter for Scotland. Of course the Libyans, as they always did, raised Megrahi.

MBDA says the Libyans never signed the arms deal.

But what is startling is the continuing emergence of revelations about the squalid relationship between the Blair government and Colonel Gaddafi.

First we learned of the willingness of the former British prime minister to fawn over an international terrorist as part of a charm offensive to win lucrative oil contracts.

With disclosures released under Freedom of Information, we now discover the grubby deal which allowed the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing to be freed early from a Scottish prison was linked to Libya agreeing to buy £400 million of British arms.

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Government, Politics, Scotland

Police Scotland: ‘Computer revamp hits £45m’…

SCOTLAND’s unitary police force is facing a fresh crisis after it emerged that the budget for a crime-fighting computer project has almost quadrupled to £45 million.

Earlier this year it was disclosed that Police Scotland is using eight separate IT databases from the former regional system.

The systems, though, are incompatible with each other, despite the merger of Scottish Police forces into a single force on April 1.

This has led to warnings that criminals may escape detection because of poor sharing of intelligence.

At First Minister’s Questions, yesterday, at Holyrood in Edinburgh, Alex Salmond said the cost of replacing the police computer network is estimated to be £45 million over a decade.

The Scottish Government had originally estimated that integrating the systems of the old eight forces would initially cost £12 million over three years.

Lewis Macdonald, the justice spokesman for Labour, said that public faith is dwindling fast following one calamity after another for the new police service.

It has been revealed that police have been privately briefing for two years that integration would cost £45 million. The Scottish Police Authority (SPA), the body set up to oversee the new force, made the revelation. The true figure was only made public yesterday at First Minister’s Questions.

Information and communications technology (ICT) integration has been described as Police Scotland’s priority but critics fear the Scottish Parliament’s scrutiny of ICT has been downgraded following the resignation of three senior SPA executives, events that have prompted claims of a leadership crisis.

Mr Salmond insists the resignations ‘will have no impact’ on ICT integration because the SPA’s chief information officer remains in post. The First Minister said the ‘proposal for the acquisition of the single ICT system to cover recording, management, analysis of data and crime, vulnerable persons, criminal justice and custody, missing persons and property is a major advance’.

The First Minister added:

… Discussions with the SPA indicate the estimated total cost of £45 million over ten years is affordable within their existing budget.

Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) have previously heard the present ‘hamfisted’ IT network still relies on outdated floppy discs, does not comply with police regulations and leave officers open to criticism if a prisoner dies in custody.

South Scotland Labour MSP Graeme Pearson, a member of Holyrood’s justice committee, said:

… This is the first time this number has been brought to light and brings to a conclusion the ambiguity that has existed up to now about the cost and the likely way forward for the service; £12 million was the Government’s guess and it was obviously an unreasonable figure.

Mr Pearson also said that a highly publicised ‘turf war’ between Police Scotland and the SPA over division of power at the top of the new service has been resolved. He added:

… Many of the major government issues have been reallocated so that Police Scotland will be in charge of human resources, finance and corporate services… The SPA will do what it was designed to do: utilise governance and accountability by watching the way the service delivers according to the strategy. Until now, the SPA deemed it would be responsible for all support staff, all ICT, be the accountable officers for finance and human resources and so forth.

Holyrood’s justice sub-committee on policing will question SPA chairman Vic Emery and Police Scotland chief constable Sir Stephen House on the SPA resignations. That meeting will take place next Thursday. An SPA spokesman said the papers for the next SPA meeting on Wednesday would include details of the revised ICT strategy.

The SPA further added that the £12 million was only a theoretical figure that existed in a Government document. It says there is ‘no ring-fenced sum’ in its capital budget purely for technology.

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