A mother left in debilitating pain and faecally incontinent from vaginal mesh has been awarded a record settlement of at least £1 million.

While all medical negligence wins can be seen as a success for the mesh-injured community, this sum is extremely unusual, and considerably higher than what the majority of women receive in settlements.

Having run Sling The Mesh for more than eight years, we would hazard a guess at the average settlement being around £40,000.

Many cases are thrown out before they get to court, some never get off the ground owing to being out of the legal time frame and many more women don’t even attempt a medical negligence claim as the process feels too stressful, triggering ptsd and anxiety.

Women in Northern Ireland are even further restricted as the No Win No Fee options are not available in their country.

Barriers to Justice are so wide-ranging that our compelling message following the record pay-out is this:

The government must offer meaningful, timely and non-adversarial financial redress to all women harmed by pelvic mesh as outlined among nine key recommendations in the Baroness Cumberlege First Do No Harm report

What is the latest situation on financial redress?

Patient Safety Commissioner Henrietta Hughes is currently compiling a report following a survey of mesh injured women. We hope the government takes her Redress Project report seriously, as the current system of fighting for compensation through the courts is unacceptable.

We were innocent players in one of the biggest health scandals of our generation. Nine in 10 of us weren’t warned of mesh risks. We all trusted our doctors when they said our “simple quick fix” surgery would be life-changing.

It was certainly life-changing. But in ways we could never have imagined.