George Gannon
When George Gannon became aware of a spate of dog poisonings where he was living in Thailand, he couldn’t stand by and do nothing. The animal loving Briton and his Canadian girlfriend Natalie Hobbs gave the strays a home, by setting up a small make shift rescue centre in their yard with seven dogs. He also managed to re-home several puppies. It was likely because of his ‘big-hearted’ nature that friends and family – and i readers – dug deep and raised £25,000 for the popular entrepreneur when he was stranded in the Asian country after waking up unable to walk or talk last September.
Diagnosed with a brain tumor aged just 29, Thai doctors made him stable, but they couldn’t provide the treatment he needed so his family made a desperate plea for help as George had no medical insurance. A month later he was flown home, but after a second surgery to remove more of his tumour and 10 rounds of radiotherapy, medics have told his devastated loved ones that there is nothing more they can do. George was set to have pioneering immunotherapy – a treatment that boosts the body’s natural defences to fight cancer – but he had just one session in December when he began to deteriorate. His family were told his growths had doubled in size.
Filed under: Cancer, CBD, brain tumour, Cancer, CBD oil, NHS
Published on openDemocracy, the memorandum of information for the £700m sell-off of Staffordshire cancer services is now available for the 800,000 directly affected and 3 million indirectly affected patients to read online.
That document, together with others relating to the joint £1.2bn privatisation of cancer and end-of-life services in Staffordshire, was sent to me. They are commercially confidential, secret agreements that will rebuild NHS services for hundreds of thousands of people, but are for the eyes of the bidding companies only. Not only is this the first billion-pound NHS privatisation, it is the first time that it has been deemed acceptable to put care designed to meet the needs of our most vulnerable patients on sale.
Uniquely for a privatisation on anything of this scale, there has been no public consultation, simply a series of weak “engagement” events led by paid “patient champions”. For the past year unpaid patients have not been able to have their say. Thanks to the brave person who shared the documents, now they can.