INCONTINENCE is a miserable condition affecting many women following childbirth. Rather than have a future of urinary leaks and embarrassment, hundreds of thousands of women across the world took their doctors’ advice and opted to have a polypropylene transvaginal mesh implant. They were told by that this “new short procedure” was the “gold standard treatment;” that it would “change their lives.”

Well, they certainly go that bit right. Mesh has destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of women across the world from Scotland to Australia and from Sweden to America.

In the US multimillion-pound lawsuits are under way or have been settled with some women being paid up to $30 million — of course no level of financial payout will bring back their health.
Mesh is set to be the subject of the biggest medical class action in Australian history. Here in Scotland over 500 mesh cases are underway with the number rising every week. This is one of the great medical scandals of our times.
 
Yet readers might not have heard of it because talking about “women’s bits” and the dropping the “V word” are still largely taboo in our mainstream media, with a few very honourable exceptions — most notably the magnificent work of Marion Scott at the Sunday Post and the Victoria Derbyshire show on the BBC.

My involvement with mesh stretches back to 2012 when a group of Scottish women whose lives have all been horrendously impacted by mesh first made me aware of the issue. These brave women entered our meeting room on crutches and in wheelchairs, some being helped along by their partners or friends.

They told me of their pain, how they had lost their jobs, their homes, their relationships — some had lost organs. It was truly horrific and deeply moving. From that day, I gave a commitment to do all I could to raise awareness of their plight, to campaign for a ban on mesh and for better treatment for survivors.

Initially, no-one really wanted to know. The medical profession dismissed the women’s claims, saying it was all in their heads and that mesh was safe. The Scottish government, backed up by consultants who had been trained and sometimes financially supported by the mesh manufacturers, repeated the mantra that mesh was safe and continued using it. The regulator the MHRA gave mesh the all clear.

However, all around the evidence was growing to the contrary. Using all the usual parliamentary procedures — questions, motions, members’ debates and media opportunities, we kept the story in the public domain but there was no significant breakthrough.

We then advised the women to submit a petition to the Scottish Parliament’s petitions committee calling on mesh to be banned. When the petition came before the committee the atmosphere in the packed committee room was electric — described by the then chairman, Labour’s Dave Stewart, as the most emotional committee meeting he had ever attended.

Responding to the petition the Health Secretary Alex Neil announced he was suspending mesh in Scotland. Progress at last we thought, there was great jubilation amongst the petitioners that no other woman would suffer the same as the mesh survivors. However, all was not as it seemed and surgeons found a way around the suspension and continued to carry out implant procedures.

In the meantime, the new incoming Cabinet Secretary, Shona Robison, established a working group to look into all aspects of the mesh saga. This group was beset by problems from the outset.
Meetings were held that excluded patients’ representatives, the chair resigned, some of the clinicians resigned and finally the patient reps resigned citing the removal of key evidence from the final report, evidence that had been included in the previously agreed first draft. When the report finally came out is was rightly and roundly condemned as a “whitewash.”

Bringing this tragic story up to date, mesh remains suspended in Scotland. The British government followed suit and we await the findings of a review being carried out by Baroness Cumberlege.

In Scotland, I have been pushing the Scottish government to bring US surgeon Dr Veronikis here to help these desperately ill women. He is a world-renowned surgeon who has developed new techniques and instruments to carry out full mesh removals. The results are phenomenal.

In November 2018, he offered to come here to carry out procedures and train Scottish surgeons in his techniques. Despite a commitment by the Scottish government to investigate this there has been little or no progress. Meanwhile, Scottish women are resorting to crowdfunding to raise the money required to travel to the US for surgery — two of them are there now.

Finally, two other elements of the mesh story are emerging — one is the issue of male mesh. We are now seeing more and more men coming forward in agony — they have been fitted with a similar polypropylene product to help repair hernia. It looks like male mesh could be the next part of the scandal.

And for the last year, I have been working with the Baxter family. Their mum Eileen died of bowel complications. Her death certificate identified mesh as a contributory factor. The first time this has been acknowledged, yet no post mortem was ever carried out. We have to find out why.