Sling the Mesh campaigners from Norfolk and Cambridgeshire lobby MPs in London
Kath Sansom, who is behind the Sling the Mesh campaign. Photo: HELEN DRAKE - Credit: HELEN DRAKE
More than 80 women and their families including women from Norfolk and Cambridgeshire are travelling to Parliament today to urge for a suspension of what they say is a high risk women's operation thanks to a campaign spearheaded by a journalist from our newspaper group.
Women's mesh implants have been likened to a 'slow motion car crash in the pelvis' by one of the country's leading mesh removal surgeons.
They have also been called like 'skewering women with kebab sticks,' by a surgeon at a conference who said he was 'frightened' of using two types of mesh implant.
Mums who have suffered serious life changing pelvic floor injuries and long term chronic pain as a result of what is called a minor procedure to treat problems often caused by childbirth, got together thanks to support group Sling The Mesh launched by our newspaper group journalist Kath Sansom in June 2015.
More than 100,000 mesh tape implant surgeries have been carried out in the UK in the last decade.
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Kath Sansom, founded the Sling the Mesh campaign after suffering debilitating pain following the TVT procedure which she had inserted and removed on the NHS.
'I now have more than 2,200 members of Sling The Mesh. All of us who are suffering were told it was a simple 20 minute fix,' she said.
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'What none of us were told were the devastating complications. 'When it goes wrong it is catastrophic and even if women have the mesh removed, it is such major surgery, that the women never go back to what they once were.'
Mesh has been called the biggest women's health scandal since the morning sickness drug Thalidomide that left babies born with deformed limbs in the 60s and 70s
Owen Smith MP, shadow Northern Ireland secretary, said: 'I am deeply concerned that so many women have experienced profound, life changing complications after mesh surgery. Women who have undergone the surgery invariably say they were advised that this was a simple operation, with little accompanying risk.' Joining him is retired surgeon John Osborne, who predicted a disaster with meshes well over a decade ago and mesh removal surgeon Suzy Elneil.
