David, Karen and Rhiannon are just three people among tens of thousands in Wales for whom living in pain for years has become the price of the crisis gripping our health services.
All three are among huge numbers of people who have had to wait years for a simple, routine operation to relieve the agony they face on a daily basis and allow them to live a normal life. A WalesOnline investigation has highlighted the shocking numbers of people forced to live — and in thousands of cases die — while waiting for help to ease their suffering.
We found that 15,581 people have died while waiting for an operation to relieve their suffering since 2016, with some having waited over six years and still not had their procedure. The procedures they were waiting for were mostly not life threatening - and were unlikely to have caused their death - but would have caused them significant distress and prevented them leading active lives in their last years. They are some of the biggest casualties of our overstretched hospital services.
