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Sling The Mesh Survey 2017

12 December 2017

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Sling The Mesh in the news: 2017

Sling The Mesh in the news: 2018

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Mesh implants are used in operations to treat incontinence, prolapse, hernia, rectopexy and some mastectomy repairs after breast cancer.

🗣️🗣️ NEW HERNIA MESH PAPER: A new peer-reviewed sc

🗣️🗣️ NEW HERNIA MESH PAPER: A new peer-reviewed scientific paper recognises something we have been saying for years: Patients are part of the evidence. Lived experience matters.

For too long, people reporting chronic pain after hernia mesh surgery have been dismissed, ignored, or told their symptoms are psychological and probably due to anxiety or depression.

This paper from France acknowledges the importance of listening to expert patients who live with the consequences every day - and how their stories should be part of the evidence base used to calculate risk vs benefit.

The paper also raises serious questions about underreporting.

More than 200,000 inguinal hernia repairs are performed annually in France, yet fewer than 30 serious adverse events per year were officially recorded between 2020 and 2024.

The paper highlights what we have been saying for years - there is a black hole of missing data.

To read the full paper head to the blog section of our website.

#slingthemesh #hernia #mesh #inguinal #patientsafety #firstdonoharm

❤️💙 Our second question this week was raised in Pa

❤️💙 Our second question this week was raised in Parliament thanks to MP Sharon Hodgson, co-chair of the First Do No Harm All Party Parliamentary Group.

Next Thursday it’s World Patient Safety Day and in the light of this, Sharon called for a debate asking when will the government commit to compensation as outlined in the Hughes report.

Women have had their concerns and dismissed for too long, Sharon said.

The minister has committed to finding out and giving a reply ❤️

💙❤️ Grateful to MP Sharon Hodgson for continuing t

💙❤️ Grateful to MP Sharon Hodgson for continuing to put pressure on the government for compensation for women harmed by Pelvic Mesh and Sodium Valproate.

Parliament is sitting again after summer recess so

Parliament is sitting again after summer recess so it’s back to work on the campaign in London.

Today focusing on redress, Sunshine Legislation and standardised pathways of care at the mesh centres

#slingthemesh #mesh #firstdonoharm #patientsafety

❤️💛September marks Sepsis Awareness Month. Sadly m

❤️💛September marks Sepsis Awareness Month. Sadly more than half of women with #pelvicmesh suffer ongoing UTIs and we know far too many in the group who have had sepsis.

That's why we’re supporting @uksepsistrust to raise awareness in our community.

Sepsis is a life-threatening emergency that can affect anyone, but is often treatable if caught early.

Sepsis is the body’s life-threatening reaction to an infection that claims over 48,000 lives every year in the UK.

If someone with an infection is getting worse instead of better – and something feels seriously wrong - trust your instincts and act quickly.

Sepsis can kill within hours. A simple question could save a life. Just Ask: "Could it be Sepsis?"

Visit the UK Sepsis Trust website for information.

#sepsis #sepsisawarenessmonth #uti #marthasrule

📢📚 A new study by the Manchester Mesh Centre team

📢📚 A new study by the Manchester Mesh Centre team shows growing evidence that mesh may be linked to fibromyalgia.

📌 We hope this new study will add weight to the mesh / fibromyalgia connection so that women are taken seriously.

Our admin team managed to have fibromyalgia added to the NICE mesh complications patient decision aid - but in spite of that, women still have their fibro symptoms dismissed or treated as unrelated.

The Manchester research found evidence that mesh-related injury may trigger central sensitisation, a biological process linked to widespread, persistent pain including fibromyalgia and endometriosis.

Researchers studied 280 women and found that more than half (52%) had co-existing conditions including #fibromyalgia #chronicbackpain and #ibs

Read our latest blog on the #slingthemesh website to find out more. And let us know what you think in the comments ⬇️⬇️

#patientsafety #firstdonoharm #chronicpain #pelvicmesh

📅 2020 - Baroness Julia Cumberlege called for grea

📅 2020 - Baroness Julia Cumberlege called for greater transparency on the secret millions given from industry to the healthcare sector in her landmark First Do No Harm review thanks to our advocacy at #slingthemesh.

📅 2023 - The Government held a public consultation.

📅 2026 - Sling The Mesh attended 4 Department of Health workshops on transparency of payments as a result of the consultation. ⚠️ There was heavy push back from industry.

📅 Autumn 2026 - The Health Secretary will be presented with options to make a decision on the future of transparency reporting.

❌ There's currently only voluntary reporting of pharma payments. Nothing for the medical device sector.

❌ 70% of research payments are reported as lump sums, making meaningful scrutiny impossible.

❌ Industry is fiercely lobbying to preserve a failed voluntary system that has not delivered meaningful transparency.

🚨 Patients deserve full transparency on industry funding to doctors, hospitals, researchers, surgeon societies and lobby groups to restore trust and accountability in medicine.

SunshineLegislation #SlingTheMesh #MedicalDevices #PatientVoice #HiddenInPlainSight #firstdonoharm #patientsafety @joerogan

⚠️ 🚑 In 2000 and 2003 doctors warned in two separa

⚠️ 🚑 In 2000 and 2003 doctors warned in two separate published reports that TVT mesh slings lacked long term evidence. They cautioned that widespread removals could have serious consequences for women and the NHS.

🥲The warnings were ignored and that tragic prophecy is now being played out in mesh removal centres across the UK with a significant impact on women's physical, emotional and financial health.

➡️ Read my latest blog on the Sling The Mesh website to find out the full upsetting details of warnings ignnored in one of the biggest women's health scandals of our generation.

#slingthemesh #mesh #pelvicmesh #vaginalmesh #sui #bladderleaks #stressurinaryincontinence #childbirth #tvt #tvto #pelvicfloor @andy.burnham @womeninwestminster

💰👨‍⚖️Hernia mesh update. A jury in the United Stat

💰👨‍⚖️Hernia mesh update. A jury in the United States has ordered Covidien (part of Medtronic) to pay $88 million in the first major trial testing hundreds of similar hernia mesh claims.

The jury found that doctors were not adequately warned about the risks of Symbotex #hernia #mesh

👨‍⚖️The judge overseeing the case said there was sufficient evidence that the company may have knowingly failed to warn physicians about how quickly the collagen barrier degraded.

🤔But what does this mean for patients in the rest of the world?

⚖️💙There needs to be a fairer system so that, if people are harmed by healthcare products, they can access justice, accountability and compensation more easily, without having to endure stressful, lengthy court proceedings to secure the redress they deserve.

To read more about this story head to the blog section of our website.

#slingthemesh #firstdonoharm #fullyinformedconsent #medtronic

❤️💙Thank you @safersurgeryuk for inviting me to sp

❤️💙Thank you @safersurgeryuk for inviting me to speak at your annual conference to represent the voices of the mesh injured community.

The presentation, Empathy, Patient Voice and Lessons from Sling The Mesh, explored the critical role of empathy, kindness and active listening in healthcare - highlighting how empathy is not merely a desirable quality but a fundamental patient safety issue that can improve trust, communication and clinical outcomes.

For many members of the mesh-injured community, avoidable harm has been compounded by years of being dismissed, disbelieved or gaslit.

Our message to healthcare professionals is simple: believe us, listen without judgement, acknowledge lived experience, and treat every patient with dignity, compassion and respect.

Sometimes the greatest difference a clinician can make is ensuring a patient feels heard.

#AfPP #firstdonoharm #surgicalmesh #mesh

👨‍⚖️Rogue ex lawyer Darren Hanison formerly of For

👨‍⚖️Rogue ex lawyer Darren Hanison formerly of Fortitude Law has been ordered to pay £92,000 and indemnity costs after a judge found he seriously abused the court’s process.

📖📕Read the full story in the Law Society Gazette online. We are extremely grateful to journalist John Hyde, who has continued to report on these cases and shine a light on behaviour that has caused significant distress to already vulnerable women. His reporting has ensured that these women have been heard and that this deeply troubling and entirely unacceptable conduct has not gone unnoticed.

🔖Hanison was on record to represent six women who brought #vaginalmesh claims against the NHS, as part of a larger group of 305 claimants linked to the proceedings.

Hanison failed to lodge the papers ahead of a hearing in 2022 which caused it to be relisted.

Hanison’s firm, Fortitude Law, was shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in 2023 over his suspected dishonesty.

In February this year he was struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal after facing 17 allegations including dishonesty, misleading clients, poor service and serious regulatory breaches.

😢💔The real story here though is not about a struck-off solicitor. It's about the women who were failed.

Many of these women had already endured years of pain, life-changing injuries, repeated dismissal and the trauma associated with pelvic mesh implants.

Seeking legal help was supposed to be a path towards accountability. Instead, they found themselves represented by a solicitor who was later struck off following findings including dishonesty, misleading clients, poor service and serious regulatory breaches.

Absolutely unforgivable.

#slingthemesh #darrenhanison #firstdonoharm #patientsafety #lawsociety

🚨 Did you know? Many women with bladder leaks neve

🚨 Did you know? Many women with bladder leaks never needed mesh surgery in the first place. Thousands have been harmed when they could have opted for physio or traditional non-mesh surgeries - except most women were never told this.

😱 This video shows a polypropylene mesh sling up close, including its giant implanting hooks.

🔖These devices were used to treat stress urinary incontinence / bladder leaks from the late 90s, but in 2018 their use was suspended across the UK by Baroness Julia Cumberlege due to concerns about the scale of irreversible, avoidable and unacceptable harm.

The mesh slings may well have fixed the leaks - but they can cause complications far worse than the original problem they set out to fix, including:
Chronic pain
Constant UTIs
Loss of sex life due to pain
Slicing through vaginal walls
Slicing into nearby organs
Autoimmune diseases

#slingthemesh #firstdonoharm #patientsafety #tvt #tvto #tot #incontinence #bladderleaks

☀️What is Sunshine Legislation and why do we need

☀️What is Sunshine Legislation and why do we need it now?

📚Patients have a right to know about financial relationships between doctors and the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

💰Also, patients and the wider public / media / MPs / regulators have a right to know how much money is being given to researchers, hospitals, health charities, surgeon societies and political lobby groups.

💡For years, transparency has relied on voluntary disclosure. But voluntary systems leave gaps, and patients deserve better.

🔖The good news? Progress is being made. Following four workshops with the Department of Health and Social Care which #slingthemesh attended, proposals are being developed for the new Health Secretary Yvette Cooper to improve transparency around industry payments in healthcare.

🔖Now we need your help.

🔖 Baroness Cumberlege's landmark #firstdonoharm review called for mandatory transparency measures. A Sunshine-style law would help ensure payments are openly declared, creating a system that is more transparent, accountable, and trustworthy for everyone.

📧 Please email your MP and ask them to write to Health Secretary Yvette Cooper in support of mandatory Sunshine-style legislation. The more MPs who raise this issue, the harder it becomes to ignore.

🔎Transparency builds trust. Patients deserve transparency. Let's make it happen.

#SunshineLegislation #PatientSafety #HealthcareTransparency #MedTech #Pharma #Transparency #Healthcare #PatientVoice #CumberlegeReview #UKPolitics

@joeroganexperience

C

🚨 £929 MILLION was given from pharmaceutical compa

🚨 £929 MILLION was given from pharmaceutical companies to the UK health sector in 2025. Let that sink in.
Nearly £1 BILLION.

🔍 But here's what most people don't know...

💰 More than 70% of that (£647m) was reported as "research funding" in one giant lump sum.

❓That means the public can't see exactly who received the money, how much they got, or where it went. How is that transparency?

⚠️ The Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries continues to resist full disclosure of individual research payments, preventing the level of transparency that patients deserve.

And it gets worse...

🩺 Pharmaceutical companies must disclose some payments.

🚫 Medical device manufacturers don't have to.

Companies making devices such as #PelvicMesh #HerniaMesh #BreastMesh are not subject to an equivalent public disclosure system.

Patients are told to trust the system.

But how can there be trust without transparency?

Follow the money. Ask the questions. Demand accountability.

#slingthemesh #patietnsafety #firstdonoharm #mesh #pelvicmesh

❤️💙Interview with Kath Sansom on Sky News about th

❤️💙Interview with Kath Sansom on Sky News about the urgent need for compensation for women avoidably harmed by #pelvicmesh and #sodiumvalproate

We trusted our doctors, yet the majority of us were never warned of the life changing and irreversible risks.

Women have lost jobs, pensions, savings, marriages, hobbies, quality of life and their sense of self.

We deserve accountability and justice.

#PelvicMesh #SodiumValproate #PatientSafety #CompensationNow #Firstdonoharm

🔖We are grateful to the BMJ for covering the story

🔖We are grateful to the BMJ for covering the story of how 6 years on from the Cumberlege Review, and over a decade of advocacy from #slingthemesh and we’re still waiting for meaningful action on transparency around pharma and device payments to the health sector.

💰Industry payments reached £540 million in the UK in 2025 from the pharmaceutical industry alone - declared voluntarily. That's a lot of money.

📑Around 70% of that was research payments.

😱 We have no idea how much from the medical device sector for things such as surgical mesh as there is no logging.

Baroness Cumberlege called for improved transparency as a key recommendation yet a recent series of government workshops led to no commitment to making it the law for payments to be reported.

More worryingly there was heavy pushback from pharma (ABPI) who do NOT TO WISH TO DISCLOSE research payments.

Do not be fooled. This money is not philanthropic funding. It can be clever marketing / key opinion leader funding and was a key issue underpinning the #pelvicmesh scandal.

Transparency shouldn’t be controversial. It’s fundamental to trust in healthcare. Patients, journalists and politicians have a right to know about financial relationships that can influence treatment decisions.

To read the BMJ article head to the blog sesction of our website.

#conflictsofinterest #trustinhealthcare #patientsafety #firstdonoharm

❤️💙Thanks to everyone who got involved in our rece

❤️💙Thanks to everyone who got involved in our recent MP email rally about compensation for women avoidably harmed by #pelvicmesh and #sodiumvalproate

We are grateful to the many MPs who are now receiving replies from Preet Gill MP Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health Innovation and Safety, who will soon be meeting with Patient Safety Commissioner Henrietta Hughes to discuss redress.

Thousands of mesh injured women have had their physical, mental and financial health cruelly stripped from them. Many have lost jobs, hobbies, relationships and their sense of self.

After years of delay, the Government must provide the redress, support and justice these women deserve.

#patientsafety #redressnow firstdonohar

😱 It's devastating to see #breastmesh being aggres

😱 It's devastating to see #breastmesh being aggressively marketed globally for #breastcancer patients and in cosmetic surgery. 💰A recent market insight report shows breast mesh is estimated to be worth $840 million by 2030. It is clear to see there are huge profits up for grabs.

We already know what comes next ... women being gaslit and told their pain has nothing to do with the mesh.

⬇️ Below is the experience of a member of our support group suffering complications from breast mesh used in her post #mastectomy reconstruction - she had a lightbulb moment on finding us and realised she wasn't going mad.

🔖💬Linda writes - I had breast cancer and later found out that mesh had been used in my reconstruction in 2017. Im still suffering with mesh issues and still arguing with surgeons and GPs regarding this.

Sling The Mesh literally saved me from going insane and saved me from deep depression after all the gaslighting they fed me and the famous line of "Im the ONLY ONE" to complain about mesh - the poison they put inside me WITHOUT MY CONSENT 🤬 It's been nearly 10yrs with mesh now and I still get so angry over it. The denial and gaslighting made my cancer battle 100 times worse than it already was.

Please share to raise awareness of the dangers of breast mesh.

@mumsnet

#womenshealth #mesh #patientsafety

💙❤️We are grateful to Andy Burnham in his first sp

💙❤️We are grateful to Andy Burnham in his first speech to Parliament for recognising the fight for justice by too many campaigners - including the years of advocacy by women's campaigners on Mesh, Primodos, Sodium Valproate and PIP implants.

Burnham spoke about our campaigns during his speech about Hillsborough Law where he said the law would be :

➡️ A "rewiring of the state", shifting power from public authorities to ordinary people.

➡️ Families affected by tragedies have too often been re-traumatised by the behaviour of the state after the original event.

The bill would put "decency back at the heart of the British state" through a legal duty of candour on public officials.

➡️ Parliament was "rebalancing the scales of justice" and called the legislation a major change in how Britain handles accountability.

#hillsboroughlaw #pelvicmesh #primodos #sodiumvalproate #patientsafety #firstdonoharm

🚨 Compensation for women harmed by pelvic mesh and

🚨 Compensation for women harmed by pelvic mesh and sodium valproate featured on Sky News.

Patient Safety Commissioner Professor Henrietta Hughes has given the Government a deadline of 16 July to make a firm commitment on whether it will provide compensation for women avoidably harmed.

The case for compensation was clearly set out in both the 2024 Hughes Report and the 2020 First Do No Harm Report. Women have waited far too long for justice, accountability and the support they deserve.

📢 It's time for action, not more delays.

#slingthemesh #henriettahughes #firstdonoharm

❤️💙 Our deepest condolences are with the family an

❤️💙 Our deepest condolences are with the family and friends of former Senator Derryn Hinch - the first Australian politician to take mesh injured women seriously and a passionate advocate for the Mesh injured community globally.

📢 Derryn described transvaginal mesh as one of the biggest medical scandals and used his platform and the courage of his convictions to expose a scandal that many preferred to ignore.

Known as the "Human Headline," Derryn was a fearless journalist, a political champion for justice, and a true hero to global mesh injured patients.

At a time when the surgical mesh scandal received little attention Derryn was the first Australian Senator to speak out on what was then considered a taboo health issue.

📢 He listened to women, believed their stories, and used his voice to ensure they were heard.

His advocacy drove the Australian Senate Inquiry into mesh - which #slingthemesh gave evidence to in 2018.

He stood alongside us all with compassion, determination, and integrity, supporting the fight for recognition, accountability, and change.

He was also a tremendous supporter of #SlingTheMesh helping us raise awareness of the harms. His encouragement and advocacy made a real difference.

Derryn's kindness, courage, unwavering support, and commitment to speaking truth to power will never be forgotten. 🌟

He will be greatly missed by the mesh community, the countless women whose voices he helped amplify, and everyone whose lives he touched.

💪His legacy will live on in every woman who finally found her voice because he helped make people listen.

Thank you, Derryn. Rest in peace.

#SlingTheMesh #DerrynHinch HumanHeadline

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