BBC Look North
Ray Nimmo - Landmark Clinical Negligence Victory
with
Harry Gration, Christa Ackroyd
and Andy Joynson in the field
June 28, 2002
First transmission at 6.30pm
Announcer: This is BBC 1, with Look North, presented by Harry Gration, Christa Ackroyd and Helen Philpott.
Harry Gration: Hello and welcome to Look North.
Christa Ackroyd: Compensation for years on tranquillisers. The medical victory giving hope to thousands of Valium addicts.
Christa Ackroyd: He went to the doctor's with a routine mouth infection and ended up being reduced to the state of a zombie. A prescription for tranquillisers led to an addiction that lasted fourteen years. Now, Ray Nimmo from Scunthorpe has won a landmark case against his doctors for clinical negligence in overprescribing Valium. As Andy Joynson reports his case could bring new hope to thousands of others who have suffered years of misery.
Ray Nimmo [looking at old photos with solicitor Caroline Moore of Medical Solicitors, in Sheffield.]: I just look so... it's just not me, not the real me. It's quite scary really.
Andy Joynson [voiceover]: Ray Nimmo reflects on fourteen wasted years - years he spent addicted to Valium prescribed by his GPs.
Ray Nimmo [sitting at computer facing camera]: I can hardly remember those years. I was just completely lost in this... zombie-like, trance-like state. I was just... zonked out!
Andy Joynson: And what was that like for the rest of your family?
Ray Nimmo: It was dreadful. My wife lost a husband and my son lost a father for all those years. It's only in recent years that I've become reacquainted with my son. It's dreadful. This should never happen to anyone.
Andy Joynson [Footage of Valium manufacturing plant with Andy Joynson voiceover]: Valium and other tranquillisers came into common use in the sixties. Always controversial, powerful and addictive - they are a useful drug. By the eighties overuse was common. Doctors were told: restrict them! Don't overprescribe!
[Camera looks through right lens of Ray Nimmo's glasses at web site on computer. Camera pans over web site.]
Ray Nimmo now runs a web site to help people come off tranquillisers - 190,000 people logged on to it last month, and that's why winning a case against his GPs for negligent prescribing has caused shock waves. Ray's small victory sets a big precedent.
[Footage of Cottage Beck Road, Scunthorpe outside Dr Shambhu's and Dr Ugargol's surgery.]
His doctors in Scunthorpe didn't want to comment. His case is now likely to be referred to the doctors' governing body, the GMC.
[Camera close-up on surgery sign. Andy Joynson walking up Cottage Beck Road holding the 1988 Committee on Safety of Medicines guidelines.]
Now these are the government guidelines on the prescription of tranquillisers. They quite clearly state that they should only be given for short periods of time - two to four weeks they recommend. Yet here, Ray was prescribed them for fourteen years - and there are thousands of people in a similar situation. This one off legal victory will have put governments, doctors, and some of the biggest drug manufacturers in the world on alert, because they will know that there is more to come. Andy Joynson. BBC Look North. Scunthorpe.
Harry Gration: Thanks Andy.
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