Harsh Ivo criticism of the doctor who mass-medicated ME sufferers
The doctor who SVT investigated for the medication of patients with fatigue syndrome is now being severely criticised by the Inspectorate for Health and Social Care (Ivo). Ivo states that the care has not been conducted according to science and proven experience.
When SVT began to scrutinise the private Amelie Clinic, around 300 patients had turned there with post-viral fatigue syndromes such as ME and post-covid.
According to the National Board of Health and Welfare, there is no medicine that cures, and therefore patients should be treated through symptom relief. However, at the Amelie Clinic, patients were given a wide range of medications over a long period of time, including Valganciclovir, which is usually given to AIDS patients with eye infections.
Doctors warned
When SVT scrutinised the clinic and its doctor Jonas Axelsson, other doctors warned against the medication:
- ‘You use drugs that can be life-threatening,’ said Christer Lidman, consultant and specialist in infectious diseases at the post-covid clinic at Karolinska Huddinge.
However, the vast majority of patients were satisfied with the treatment they received, despite SVT's investigation showing that many described side effects in closed Facebook groups.
However, two patients reported the clinic to Ivo, which the newspaper ETC was the first to report. The patients who complained had been given a large number of medicines over a long period of time, felt unwell and then realised that they had been given the wrong diagnosis by their doctor.
The professor of infectious diseases who was consulted by Ivo prior to the decisions on the cases considers that the care and investigation ‘show particularly serious deficiencies’, and calls the handling of possible side effects ‘careless and deficient’.
In its decision, Ivo states that Jonas Axelsson made diagnoses without sufficient documentation, prescribed large quantities of drugs without taking into account possible side effects and without the drugs being authorised for the patients' diagnoses.
‘The criticism is wrong’
SVT has sought out Jonas Axelsson for an interview, but he will only provide a written comment. He writes that ‘the criticism is incorrect and a consequence of not taking all the material into account.’
Jonas Axelsson criticises the competence of the professor who was consulted and says that Ivo's criticism goes ‘directly against the recommendations in the National Board of Health and Welfare's guidelines for the care of the patient group’.
Ivo maintains its conclusions and writes that the comments received from Jonas Axelsson on the draft decision do not change Ivo's position.
Some time after SVT's review, the clinic closed, according to its own statement, because there were no longer any staff or funding.
Oh and it's no longer a "viscious cycle" of inactivity and fear avoidance, but a negative spiral. It's important with newspeak.