Sydney - Shocking footage of a mentally ill woman covered in
faeces, stumbling around a hospital corridor and falling over two
dozen times shortly before she died has emerged in Australia,
provoking condemnation and calls for an inquiry.
The incident took place in 2014 but the footage was only made public
on Friday when The Daily Telegraph newspaper published it on their
website.
It shows how mother-of-two Miriam Merten was shut naked in an
isolation room for more than five hours before a nurse unlocked her
room in the morning.
She was then left to stumble around the hallway at the mental
hospital in Lismore, a town in northern New South Wales, eventually
collapsing in a corner. She died the next day in another hospital.
A coronial inquest in September found she died of "traumatic and
hypoxic brain injury caused by numerous falls and the self-beating of
her head on various surfaces, the latter not done with the intention
of taking her own life."
Coroner Jeff Linden said a senior nurse at the facility was aware
that the patient had been sedated with psychotropic drugs and fallen
on at least one occasion, but failed to take appropriate action.
"The lack of care and compassion showed to the deceased was
monumentally disgraceful," Linden said in the findings.
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said Friday: "We'll do
everything we can to make sure this never happens again."
But the opposition Labor party has called for an urgent parliamentary
inquiry into the state's mental health facilities, as well as a full
and transparent review of the incident.
The two nurses involved in the incident were both sacked.