London, March 20: UK reality TV star Jade Goody died after being let down by “incompetent and negligent” National Health Service (NHS) staff, her doctor has claimed in a TV special to air on Sunday (GMT).
Dr Ann Coxon slammed medics who allegedly examined “Big Brother” star Goody when her tumor was the size of a tangerine – but missed it, The Sun reported.
They did not realize her symptoms – which Coxon said were “glaringly obvious” – pointed to cervical cancer.
And NHS staff also failed to find out why Goody was not turning up for the cervical smear tests which would have revealed the killer tumor.
“Her symptoms – which included heavy and irregular bleeding, pain and abnormal smear tests – can all indicate cancer. There should have been alarm bells ringing,” consultant and former NHS doctor Coxon said.
“But Jade didn’t know that. She’d had abnormal smear tests since she was 16 so by the time she was 27 it didn’t worry her much, because she didn’t really know what it meant. It had never been properly explained to her.
“After she was diagnosed, she said to me, in that typically Jade way, ‘I’m not daft. If I’d known it was to do with cancer, I’d have been checked out every three months’. Jade realised she had been let down. She simply said, ‘Sometimes people make mistakes’.
“Jade’s death was completely unnecessary and preventable. She died of neglect and of incompetence.”
Goody, 27, died on March 22 last year.
Coxon will appear on “Jade: A Year Without Her,” screening on Living TV on Sunday at 9 p.m.
After years of abnormal smear tests, a bowel cancer scare, a miscarriage and abdominal pain, Goody was eventually given an ultrasound at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, in August 2008 – just before she went to India to star in a reality show.
She was allowed to travel as the hospital apparently did not pick up anything serious. But a nurse realized Goody had skipped smear tests and had asked her to have one. It revealed the cancerous cells.
She was given the news on camera and flew home into the care of Coxon, who immediately got her an emergency hysterectomy, chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
“An ultrasound should be able to pick up lesions just 1.2mm wide, and Jade had a tumor the size of a tangerine. It should have been blindingly obvious,” Coxon said.
“She probably had cancer for at least a year before her diagnosis. The abnormal smear tests were signs that she was high-risk. She was only diagnosed because of one nurse bothering to do her job.
“She need not have died if the medical profession had got their act together in time.”
—Agencies