A WOMAN has told how her dying father was given hospital meals even though his illness meant he could not eat them.
Erin Finn spoke out days after it was revealed in the Lancashire Telegraph that Royal Blackburn and Burnley hospitals threw away more than £500,000 of wasted meals in one year.
Miss Finn, of Blackburn, watched her father, Leo Finn, die of pancreatic cancer in Royal Blackburn Hospital on May 7.
Both Miss Finn and her father told hospital staff he was too ill to manage full meals but she said he was still told to order three meals a day during his four-week stay.
She said: “Dad had to wear an oxygen mask. A nurse just came over and removed it to take his meal order.
“He was really distressed and saying, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I don’t care about the food, I want to breathe’.
“She said he had to fill it in. He was in agony and I had to watch.”
Miss Finn was so worried about her father’s diet she bought pouches of baby food to try to feed him.
After two weeks, Miss Finn said the hospital told her they could provide pureed food.
She said: “I don’t know why they didn’t do that in the first place. They must have seen other patients in his condition.
“When the pureed meals came, the were so big they were off-putting and he couldn’t face it.”
The figures showed the Royal Blackburn Hospital binned around 140,000 full meals, costing an average of £3.15 each and a total of £443,094 between April 2012 and May this year.
Over the same period, Burnley Hospital kitchens threw away 21,289 meals, at an estimated cost of £81,394.
Miss Finn, a beautician who is expecting her first child, said there were no set meal times on the ward.
A spokesperson for East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust said: “We offer our sincere condolences to Mr Finn’s family.
“The care and safety of our patients is our overriding priority.
“We have not been contacted by the family or had any issues raised with us. We would encourage the family to raise any concerns directly.”
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