Jacintha Saldanha, RIP

It would not be right to have a blog on India in London without acknowledging the sad death of Jacintha Saldanha, whose funeral was held yesterday at her home town of Shirva in India.

As many will know, she worked as a nurse at the private King Edward VII’s hospital in London, where Kate Middleton recently stayed with severe morning sickness in early pregnancy. Here, on 5 December 2012, she unwittingly answered the phone to hoax callers from an Australian radio station pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles, asking after Kate’s health. She passed the callers on to another nurse, who gave private details of Kate’s condition – subsequently broadcast publically on 2DayFM – the Australian radio station involved.

At the time, this sparked some Facebook interest among my friends and acquaintances. It concerned an area of law we had recently been studying (medical law and confidentiality) which was now demonstrated so vividly. At the time, my immediate response had been to cringe at the phone call and what went on. I really felt sorry for both nurses, who seemed to have been taken in by the hoaxers (however bad they were). Both nurses were just doing their job, trying to look after their patients. My first thought was to hope that neither nurse got into trouble with the hospital for giving out confidential details over the phone. I hoped the hospital would be supportive and look at their systems in place for managing such phone calls, particularly regarding well-known patients instead of blaming anyone.

I was utterly shocked then, when 2 days later it was reported that Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who had answered the phone initially was found dead – believed to be suicide. Just awful.

Who knows what actually went on, if Jacintha had any other issues in her life going on or whether it was purely as a result of the prank phone call – a call done purely for ratings and publicity without thinking of the consequences.

The fact that her family had come over to the UK in search of a better life seems to compound the tragedy. There are almost echoes of Diana, Princess of Wales’s sudden death as well – seeing Jacintha Saldanha’s 2 teenage children left without their mother so young, seems to mirror Princes William and Harry losing their mother at such a young age.

The world really does seem so much smaller and interconnected now – where Jacintha’s funeral in India seems so close with crowds of mourners touched by her death and with memorial services at both the hospital in London and in Bristol where the family lived. The funeral of a nurse, who had come from India to help care for patients in London – among them a member of the Royal Family. Jacintha Saldanha, rest in peace.