A leading Scottish health campaigner has implored the Scottish Government to urgently address the problem of malnutrition of the elderly and vulnerable in National Health Service hospitals in Scotland.

Dr Jean Turner, executive director of Scotland Patients Association, warned that hundreds of patients, especially the elderly, are undernourished and deteriorating in hospital beds because they are not receiving help with feeding. She says that it is “a form of euthanasia”.

She says nursing staff rarely express their concerns about patient welfare for fear of repercussions from senior management.

A recent report estimated 50,000 patients die annually in NHS hospitals in an undernourished state, which may have hastened their deaths. The warning by the SPA follows a Scottish Public Services Ombudsman report that severely criticised a Lanarkshire hospital’s care of a 66-year old patient.

The woman’s death was attributed to kidney failure after a 14-week stay in Wishaw General Hospital, and her family says poor standards of care, especially in nutrition, hastened her end. One family member told the Sunday Herald: “Staff would tell me, ‘It takes an hour to feed your mother and we don’t have an hour’.” ~ Herald Scotland, Jul 7