An ex-nurse who is suffering from a deadly asbestos-linked disease is requesting anybody who had worked together with her to come forward with details regarding the hospitals where she worked between 1960s and 1970s.
Kalliopi Copley, a Wickersley (Rotherham) resident, was diagnosed in 2012 November with malignant mesothelioma, a deadly cancer of the mesothelium. This is a cancer caused by one’s exposure to or inhalation of asbestos fibres and dust.
Copley thinks she might’ve got in touch with asbestos material while working as trainee nurse at Rotherham-based Moorgate Hospital and Doncaster Gate Hospital (the first hospital in the town of Rotherham), part of Rotherham Nursing School, between 1966 and 1969.
She is able to recall dealing with asbestos material at the Northern General Hospital, a large teaching hospital in Sheffield, where she worked for almost 16 years as a matron.
Copley is undergoing radiotherapy at present a t the We ston Park Hospital, a dedicated cancer hospital in England. She has asked attorneys to help her realize how the dangerous mineral was used earlier in the hospitals. All those hospitals were undergoing major renovations during that time, she says. Copley wants to find out whether more could’ve been done for protecting her.
Copley said when she was being trained at the Doncaster Gate and Moorgate hospitals, she’d to walk past the renovation work each day, but she was never ever warned that asbestos was present in the site and informed how hazardous it is. She said she was more directly involved in the Northern General Hospital’s redevelopment. She had to see the work’s progress at that site.
Copley said she hopes her colleagues, including nurses, doctors and other hospital employees, would help her by providing information regarding how asbestos might’ve been used in hospitals and thus to get a few answers regarding how she developed a t errible disease like mesothelioma.
Martyn Hayward, an attorney with prominent law firm Irwin Mitchell, is representing Copley in this case. He said he hopes as many of his client’s colleagues and friends who was there with her when she was working at Doncaster Gate, Northern General and Moorgate hospitals would come forward with vital information soon so that his law firm can help Copley fight and win the justice that she deserves.
Hayward requested anybody with details regarding the working atmosphere at the Northern General, Doncaster Gate and the Moorgate hospitals to contact him via phone or email.
