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‘Diana could have been saved’

Princess Diana

LONDON: Princess Diana might have been saved if she had been taken to hospital more quickly, a leading British surgeon has told an inquest into her and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed’s deaths in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997.

Professor Thomas Treasure, who specialises in treating multiple injury patients, claimed that a “window of opportunity” may have existed to get her to the hospital half an hour before she was taken there. According to him, too much time was “squandered” by the French paramedic staff in trying to stabilise her in the ambulance. While praising their efforts, he thought that it would have been more useful to have rushed her to hospital more quickly.

Asked pointedly by the inquest counsel Nicholas Hilliard whether it was his view that the “essential period was squandered”, Prof Treasure said: “It’s a hard word, isn’t it, but I think opportunities were lost.”

He pointed out that while the “initial assessment” was done pretty quickly, “I’m not sure what happened after that, that they didn’t have her in hospital [earlier].” He also thought that the surgeon who attended to her in the hospital should have been “alerted rather sooner.”

Prof. Treasure, who had been asked to review French medical records of the treatment given to Diana, stopped short of accusing the French of negligence. “They had done a lot of good in that first hour” after the crash, he said. But once Diana was put in the ambulance, the time started “slipping away.”

About her chances of recovery, he said: “When I pick through this with the benefit of hindsight [and ask] ‘was this recoverable?’ the answer is: yes, it just about was.”

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