A full public inquiry will be held into the disgraced neurosurgeon Sam Eljamel, Scottish ministers have announced – the direct result of a decade-long fight by the doctor’s patients for recognition of the harm done to them. After the announcement, the patients expressed disappointment that the government response had taken so many years, while opposition parties accused the SNP government of a U-turn on its previous stance against such a move. Humza Yousaf confirmed the inquiry into the more than 100 botched surgeries, which resulted in life-changing injuries, at first minister’s questions before an afternoon statement to Holyrood from the Scottish health secretary, Michael Matheson, who had previously said an independent review would be sufficient. The doctor’s patients have always insisted that a full public inquiry – with the ability to compel witnesses – was necessary to expose what they said were years of negligence, cover-ups and bad governance. Their campaign group also underlined the importance of ensuring the patients had their healthcare reviewed alongside the setting up of the inquiry. Yousaf said the decision was taken after careful consideration of the “extremely disturbing” findings of a due diligence review into NHS Tayside’s handling of the case. Last week the damning internal report found that NHS Tayside allowed the neurosurgeon to continue operating on patients and failed to put in place adequate monitoring, despite a rising number of complaints.
The due diligence review criticised management for “inadequate assessment of risk and consideration of patient safety”, and said the doctor – then head of neurosurgery – was put under indirect supervision in June 2013 rather than suspended, which did not happen until December. Matheson said that this review had “changed his view” on holding a full public inquiry, which he now said was necessary “to get to the bottom of who knew what and when and get to the bottom of the failures described”. He said it was “unacceptable” that after eight internal reviews the Scottish government was still learning new detail about the handling of the case. But Matheson added that he still believed individual case reviews conducted independently of NHS Tayside remained necessary, which would “offer answers [about patient’s own healthcare] in a bespoke, personalised way that an inquiry will not”. Jules Rose, a longtime campaigner who had a tear gland removed by Eljamel instead of a brain tumour, said she welcomed the progress but added: “It shouldn’t have taken the efforts from a group of patients who to this day remain affected by the harm caused by such levels of negligence. We hope this is the start of getting to root of what can only be significant and prolonged corporate governance failings”. At a vocal protest outside the Holyrood parliament on Wednesday, about 50 former patients wearing hospital gowns splattered with fake blood shared their stories. Many men and women in the group have faced devastating consequences after treatment by Eljamel, including paralysis, blindness, nerve damage, constant pain and severe incontinence. Rose said that the patients’ campaign group now numbered 152, with five new members coming forward in the past 24 hours. This is in addition to more than 100 other patients who Eljamel was allowed to operate on unsupervised in the months before his suspension. Eljamel gave up his right to practise in the UK in 2015 and is believed to be working in Libya. Earlier this week, Matheson said Eljamel could be extradited back to Scotland depending on a continuing police investigation. In July, one patient, Theresa Mallett, told the Guardian she had suffered “soul-destroying” pain for more than a decade since a botched sciatica operation. Mallett’s angry intervention during a speech by Yousaf at a SNP convention added to mounting pressure on ministers. Also earlier this week, the MSP Jim Fairlie, who counts Rose as one of his constituents, became the first SNP MSP to come out for a public inquiry, saying that the ability to compel witnesses to appear was “the only way to get to the answers needed by the patients who were Eljamal’s victims”. Rose thanked the Scottish Conservative MSP Liz Smith, who had first taken up her case in 2013. After Matheson’s statement, Smith credited the “relentless campaigning” by Rose and her fellow patients, adding that their experiences were “some of the most harrowing stories I have ever heard”.