(TJVNEWS.COM)
Patients with learning disabilities have been given do not resuscitate orders during the deadly second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, despite widespread condemnation of the practice and an urgent investigation from a care watchdog.
Charity Mencap said it received reports in January from people with learning disabilities, who had been told that they would not be resuscitated if they contracted Covid-19.
The news comes despite the Care Quality Commission saying in December that ill-advised Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) notices had caused a number of potentially avoidable deaths last year.
Do not resuscitate orders are normally reserved for people too frail to benefit from CPR – but Mencap said that some had been issued for people because they had learning disabilities.
Edel Harris, Mencap’s chief executive, said: “Throughout the pandemic, many people with a learning disability have faced shocking discrimination and obstacles to accessing healthcare, with inappropriate Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) notices put on their files and cuts made to their social care support. “It’s unacceptable that within a group of people hit so hard by the pandemic, and who even before Covid died on average over 20 years younger than the general population, many are left feeling scared and wondering why they have been left out”
The Guardian pointed out:
NHS figures released last week show that in the five weeks since the third lockdown began, Covid-19 accounted for 65% of deaths of people with learning disabilities. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the rate for the general population was 39%, although the two statistics are drawn from different measurements. Younger people with learning disabilities aged 18 to 34 are 30 times more likely to die of Covid than others the same age, according to Public Health England.
The UK government-run health care appears to have been caught in an act of possibly practicing eugenics, and a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Social Care said told The Guardian: “It is completely unacceptable for ‘do not attempt CPR’ decisions to be applied in a blanket fashion to any group of people. This has never been policy and we have taken action to prevent this from happening”
The question remains, denying mentally disabled from COVID care is not a policy, why was this happening?
