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People with learning disabilities have been ordered not to resuscitate during the second wave of the pandemic, despite widespread condemnation of the practice last year and an urgent investigation by the watchdog.
Mencap said he received reports in January from people with learning disabilities that they were told they would not be resuscitated if they fell ill with Covid-19.
The Care Quality Commission said in December that inappropriate advice not to attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) caused potentially preventable deaths last year.
DNACPRs are typically designed for people too frail to benefit from CPR, but Mencap said some appear to have been issued for people simply because they had a learning disability. The CQC is due to publish a report on the practice within a few weeks.
The disclosure comes as activists put increasing pressure on ministers to reconsider the decision not to prioritize people with learning disabilities on immunization. There is growing evidence that even people with mild disabilities are more likely to die if they contract the coronavirus.
Although some people with learning disabilities such as Down syndrome belonged to one of four groups defined by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) whose government had promised the vaccine would be offered d ‘by tomorrow many have been classified in the lower categories of needs and are still waiting.
NHS figures released last week show that within five weeks of the start of the third lockdown, Covid-19 accounted for 65% of deaths of people with learning disabilities. Figures from the Bureau of National Statistics show that the rate for the general population was 39%, although the two statistics were taken from different measures.
Younger people with learning disabilities between the ages of 18 and 34 are 30 times more likely to die from Covid than others of the same age, according to Public Health England.
Edel Harris, Managing Director of Mencap, said: “Throughout the pandemic, many people with learning disabilities have faced shocking discrimination and barriers to accessing healthcare, with inappropriate advice. not to attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) in their records and cuts in their social network. care support.
“It is unacceptable that among a group of people so hard hit by the pandemic, and who even before Covid dies on average more than 20 years younger than the general population, many feel scared and wonder why they were excluded.
“JCVI and the government must act now to help save the lives of some of society’s most vulnerable people by prioritizing all people with learning disabilities urgently for the vaccine.”
More than 14 million people have received a first dose of the vaccine to date, and healthcare providers who spoke Observer said many people with learning disabilities were vaccinated last week. But some are still waiting. A West Midlands woman who has a rare form of Down’s syndrome told the Observer she hadn’t had a date yet.
“It’s really frustrating – it’s been a fight and it shouldn’t have been a fight,” she says. Her condition means she is in category four – clinically extremely vulnerable people – but her GP did not have details of her condition on file – a common problem, according to Mencap.
“I must have called them several times,” she says. The practice agreed last week that she needed to be vaccinated, she said, but she was still waiting. “For people in a similar situation to me, they won’t have harassed them as much as I did.”
A lack of harassment is part of the reason that people with learning disabilities may be more likely to die from Covid-19 than the rest of the population, according to Dr Keri-Michèle Lodge, consultant in psychiatric disorders with disabilities. learning in Leeds.
“Doctors often don’t understand that a person with learning disabilities may not be able to communicate their symptoms,” she says. “Caregivers are sometimes not listened to – you may notice that something is wrong, but this is often overlooked as part of their behavior.
“People with learning disabilities already receive a gross supply of health services. Fewer than two in five people with learning disabilities live to age 65. “
An Office for National Statistics analysis last week showed that six in 10 Covid deaths were in people with disabilities.
“The biggest factor associated with the increased death rate resulting from their analysis was living in nursing homes or residential facilities,” Lodge said. “They prioritized people in nursing homes for vaccinations, but that was only for the elderly. They completely forgot about people with learning disabilities in a very similar setting. I do not know if the government has been blind or simply negligent.
Professor Martin Green OBE, Managing Director of Care England, said: ‘As the largest representative body of independent adult social care providers, Care England remains concerned that the government has not granted people with learning disabilities a higher priority for the Covid vaccine. .
“We urge the government to remove the arbitrary distinction between prioritizing people with severe or profound learning disabilities and those with mild or moderate learning disabilities, and to prioritize all people with a disability. learning in priority group four. People with learning disabilities should never be overlooked. “
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