AFTER the bald facts that 12 patients have been harmed and hundreds, perhaps thousands, have been mistreated by the breast cancer department at County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust, we are beginning to hear from the women themselves.

About misdiagnoses, about potentially unnecessary mastectomies, about such shoddy treatment that they have been left unable to have children, and about the physical and, above all, the mental effects this has had on them.

These stories are shocking. They are horrifying.

It is not just the clinical negligence, it is the fact that staff were trying to raise red flags, were trying to blow whistles, for 10 years, yet they were ignored. It is outrageous. It is a scandal.

The new leadership at the trust has been commendably open and honest, but it hasn’t expla

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