Almost 50,000 patients a year die in hospital while suffering from malnutrition

By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent Published: 7:30AM GMT twenty-six February 2010

They indicted the Government of ignoring the scale of the complaint and loitering the announcement of a inform in to the issue given it "embarrasses" ministers.

The request warns that the numbers who died given they were malnourished could be most higher than the reported figure of roughly 240.

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It comes usually a day after an exploration in to the deaths of up to 1,200 patients at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust found that a small had been were left but food and H2O for days at a time.

The ultimate inform from the Nutrition Action Plan Delivery Board, a row of medics and academics set up to guard the problem, pronounced that 239 patients died given of gauntness in English hospitals in 2007.

However, it warned that the census data could be "misleading" about the scale of the problem.

The report"s authors said: "They paint less than 0.5 per cent of the series who died in sanatorium with malnutrition.

"We know that gauntness predisposes to disease, it delays liberation from seizure and it increases mortality.

"It follows that the outcome of gauntness on mankind rates is roughly larger than the series reported to have died given of malnutrition."

The Tories pronounced that this calculation would meant around 47,800 people died in sanatorium with gauntness in 2007.

Although most patients, generally the elderly, can be malnourished prior to they come in sanatorium the complaint can additionally wear when they are on a ward.

Charities advise that the astringency of the complaint is underestimated and as well mostly patients are not given sufficient assistance with eating and celebration whilst they are in hospital.

Malnourished patients stay in sanatorium for longer and are 3 times some-more expected to humour complications from surgery afterwards alternative patients.

Overall, the inform pronounced that central total showed that 2,656 people died from gauntness in hospitals and caring homes given 1997.

Although the inform was given to ministers last Aug it was usually published yesterday.

Stephen O"Brien, the shade health minister, said: "It is horrific that so most patients are failing with malnutrition.

"We have lifted this issue most times but Labour ministers have dragged their feet and are you do really small about it."

He added: "The Government has sat on this harmful inform given last summer it is comfortless to think that most some-more lives competence have been saved if they hadn"t on purpose behind edition it given of the annoyance it causes them"

The inform additionally warns that some-more than 7 million people in the UK are exposed to malnourishment, together with around 150,000 people in hospitals and 600,000 in caring homes.

The British Association for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (Bapen), that studies the issue, warns that gauntness affects around one in 10 comparison people, 93 per cent of them vital in their own homes.

Those elderly over 65 have up roughly half of the 3 million people in Britain at middle or high risk of being malnourished, notwithstanding accounting for usually sixteen per cent of the population, according to the charity.

Michelle Mitchell, from Age Concern and Help the Aged, said: "Despite thousands of comparison people failing in sanatorium whilst malnourished each year, the disaster of health ministers to lay out any petrify actions to plunge into the complaint will meant this liaison will continue.

"It is hugely unsatisfactory that notwithstanding a lot of organization to help the poor and glorious work between a small particular sanatorium trusts, finale gauntness has been marked down to a articulate emporium by the Government."

Phil Hope, the caring services minister, said: "Once again, the Conservatives have unsuccessful to scrupulously report formidable census data and are presenting all false figures.

"It utterly misleads the open to review the series of patients failing as a outcome of malnutrition, that is 239, with the series of people who have a small grade of malnourishment, mostly as a outcome of ill health.

"The total used by the Conservatives are unconditionally dubious because, sadly, gauntness is mostly a side outcome related to most long-term conditions, generally with depot illnesses or with cancer.

"It does not indispensably minister to or is a means of an individual"s death.

"To indicate differently is insane and shows an strident miss of bargain of the NHS and of the formidable issues that can lead to malnourishment."