We want the real truth before we die
SYMPHYSIOTOMY VICTIMS IN NEW PLEA
Wednesday March 03 2010
Dear Sir,
PRIME Time got it right. The women were helpless and the trainee doctors, the nurses and the midwives stood by and said nothing. We trusted our consultants, but they betrayed our trust. We were not even told what they were going to do. We were given no choice.
Now the Minister has asked the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists for a report on symphysiotomy. This is like asking the bishops to look into child sex abuse in their own dioceses. Judges were brought in to examine that abuse. We too need a Murphy Report.
The Institute will hardly backtrack on the letter they wrote in 2001 to the Department of Health. They pretended symphysiotomy was the standard treatment for a difficult labour when it wasn't.
Caesarean section was in by then. Women who were in having babies at the same time as us got a Caesarean. We got our pelvises broken. If symphysiotomy was a safer alternative, why did none of our friends, our sisters, or our cousins, have it done?
The Institute told the Department the results were good, but we know differently. We know it led to lifelong pain and suffering. They said complications were rare, but they were common. They pretended it was done as an emergency, but we know it was planned.
What was done to us was wrong, but no one wants to admit it. Now the Minister even wants to cut off all those women who had it done in the 1950s. No one wants to take responsibility.
But none of us are getting any younger. Are we not entitled to the truth before we die?
