What becomes of health's political footballs?

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Tony Blair may consider them nothing more than the chip wrappings of history, but the people whose medical dramas become the focus of political point-scoring find the experience life-changing and, in some cases, devastating.

The Prime Minister's assertion, in response to the publicity surrounding the treatment of 94-year old Rose Addis, that "a real life NHS story is today's frenzy and tomorrow's fish and chip wrapper" was described as offensive yesterday by some of those who have been used as political footballs in the past.

In the run-up to the 1992 general election, the Labour Party featured a five-year-old girl, Jennifer, who had been waiting months to have an operation to alleviate a painful case of glue ear, where a build-up of fluid behind an ear drum can cause excruciating pain.

The party never intended her real identity to become known, but it was, a development that threw her family, the Bennetts from Faversham in Kent, into a political maelstrom that came to be known as the War of Jennifer's Ear.

Labour compared her wait on the NHS with the quick treatment of another girl who was cared for privately. Jennifer's case notes were subsequently leaked, with the complicity of the Conservatives, and an argument ensued over whether or not her condition was as described by Labour. Even the child's own parents, John and Margaret, were divided over the issue. They later divorced. "It was an awful time for us," Jennifer's grandfather Peter Lee-Roberts said yesterday. "It did so much harm in so many ways to relationships and various other things." Jennifer's family was so affected by their "war" that they have decided not to become embroiled in the debate over the Rose Addis affair.

"I have discussed it with Margaret and we have agreed not to contribute in any way to television, radio or print media," he said.

"It all happened 10 years ago, but we have had a lot of trouble over it since. You must remember, Jennifer was just a girl then, but she is a young woman now."

Asked how Jennifer's ear recovered, Mr Lee-Roberts demonstrated the pointlessness of the row in the first place. "It was never her ear," he said. "She just had tonsilitis."

During the general election campaign last year, Mr Blair's showcase visit to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham was supposed to have reminded the electorate of Labour's commitment to the health service.

But it turned into a public relations disaster when he was buttonholed by Sharon Storer, whose partner, Keith Sedgwick, had been kept waiting for a bone marrow transplant.

"I'd like to know what you're going to do to provide these people with better facilities," she raged. "I hope you do, because it's absolutely appalling and if you would go and have a look at it you would find out just how terrible it really is ... They're understaffed, there are terrible facilities. The toilets are appalling. The doctors and nurses are doing their best and you're just not giving them the money to make facilities better."

Eight months on, Mr Sedgwick has had his operation and is recovering. His treatment on the NHS was, he said, "fantastic". But he was upset by Mr Blair's comments and he has little faith in Labour's handling of the service. "I think he is pathetic likening people like me to chip wrappings," he said.

"The whole issue has been pathetic, using a 94-year old woman as a political football.

"My experience wasn't pleasant. They lost my records for 24 hours, so could not give me the treatment I needed [for non-Hodgkins lymphoma] but at least I can't remember much about it, as I was ill at the time. It was Sharon who was at the centre of the limelight and she handled it well. She spoke for a lot of people when she collared Tony Blair. I'm very proud of her."

Last year, the relatives of Basil Riches, 77, were horrified to see a newspaper picture of his corpse, partly wrapped in a shroud, being stored in Bedford Hospital's chapel of rest instead of its mortuary.

The ensuing political storm dragged them and the hospital's staff, who had been struggling to cope with what were later described as "Dickensian conditions", to the point of despair. His daughter, Julie Weaver, who lives in America, said: "I recognised him instantly and so did everybody else. My aunt, my uncle, my cousins, my friends ... they all recognised him.

"It took me 10 seconds to recognise my father. He's just lying on the floor, like in a Third World country. They shouldn't have printed that picture because of people like me. I didn't want to see my father like that. What's going to be the last memory in my head of my father? It's that picture."

The British Medical Association said yesterday that the reputations of medical staff were sometimes harmed for ever by the political use of real-life cases.

At Bedford Hospital, Michael Frampton, chairman of the medical staff committee, said the furore caused by the chapel of rest incident dragged morale to breaking point.

Inquiries by The Independent subsequently revealed that staff had been asking for better mortuary facilities for 25 years. Nurses were abused and spat at on the street, porters received death threats and abusive mail.

"It was difficult to go to the supermarket in case someone recognised you as being from the hospital," he said.

"When politicians start playing games with such tragedies, that is what they sometimes fail to take into account; the terrible effect on patients and their families, and on the staff who do their best to care for them," Mr Frampton added.