The Right to Life

In 2007 Mencap published a report written by Beverley Dawkins entitled Death by Indifference. It told the stories of six people who had died as a result of what Mencap claimed was institutional discrimination.In 2013 the Confidential Inquiry into the deaths of people with learning disabilities wrote:

Of the 238 deaths of people with learning disabilities for which agreement was reached by the Overview Panel, 42% were assessed as being premature. The most common reasons for deaths being assessed as premature were: delays or problems with diagnosis or treatment; and problems with identifying needs and providing appropriate care in response to changing needs

In 2018 the LeDeR Report stated that 28% of people with learning disabilities would die before they are fifty and from other data published in a blog by Chris Hatton we know “that people with learning disabilities live, on average, lives 15-20 years shorter than other people”. Shocking but in human terms the deaths of people with learning disabilities can never just be described with statistics.