Sepsis Awareness Month

Jim Dickson Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

I am pleased to co-sponsor the debate alongside the hon. Members for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) and for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), both of whom are fellow officers of the all-party parliamentary group on sepsis. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire for that amazingly moving and revealing speech and for sharing his experience in a way that I hope all Members will take note of and that will make a difference to the way the Government take these issues forward. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this debate on Sepsis Awareness Month, with World Sepsis Day having taken place on Sunday.

I was pleased to welcome my constituent, John Snow, to Parliament last year and am extremely appreciative that he is with us today in the Gallery, alongside his wife Karen and his daughter Gracie. John developed sepsis in 2024. After first believing he was suffering with muscle pain, the situation rapidly deteriorated, resulting in hospital admission with heart attack-like symptoms and his lips turning blue. John and Karen were not aware at this point that John had many of the signs of sepsis. Within hours, his kidneys had shut down, needing dialysis, and his body went into septic shock with doctors putting him into an induced coma. It was unclear if John would survive, and the coma lasted for two weeks, during which time John was transferred from Darent Valley hospital in Dartford up to St Thomas’s just across the river from where we are now.

After a month, thankfully, John pulled through. But this good news was accompanied by the desperately difficult decision from his doctors that he needed to have a quadruple amputation. He has received amazing support from the Dartford community, which has rallied round to help fund support for his family. A special mention must go to the wonderful Dartford working men’s club, led by the amazing Nick Byram. The club not only held fundraisers for the family but has held sepsis awareness events to ensure that more people know the symptoms.

Notwithstanding this great community effort, there remains so much to do to improve post-infection support for people like John. I have been privileged to have kept in touch with John and Karen during John’s exceptionally brave recovery journey. When we met in July, he told me of the exceptionally long delay he was experiencing in receiving his new prosthetic hand. John was cast for the prosthetic at the end of last year, but due to issues relating to the move of his local prosthetic centre, it was not assembled, leaving him worried that his body may change and the prosthetic would not fit. The challenges that causes are compounded by the fact that he cannot have the casting for the second prosthetic hand until he has had the first one for a year—a timer that has not yet been able to start. John has also experienced delays and dysfunctions with his facial surgery, which he is currently undergoing with the support of surgeons and doctors.

John’s case illustrates how much we have to do to spread knowledge about sepsis and to improve care for those who have it. As others have done, I commend the campaigning work of Lord Mackinlay of Richborough, who has not only helped to raise awareness of sepsis in our health system, but has met John and provided encouragement to him in his recovery journey.

[Vikki Slade]

I too pay tribute to Lord Mackinlay because when Hamish’s story made the papers, he did not hesitate to visit Hamish, an 18-year-old, and help him through his recovery. When I first met Lord Mackinlay myself in Buckingham Palace when we had just been elected, I went to him and said, “What a hero. What an incredible man to do that every time a similar case happens.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Dickson]

What the hon. Member and I have described is the mark of the man. Not only has he suffered that appalling setback in his life, come through it with huge brio and is an active Member of the other place, he has gone the extra mile to help others in the same predicament. I cannot thank him enough for the work he has done for those who have experienced sepsis and for my constituent John.

As Craig himself would say, sepsis remains something we do not know enough about, and what knowledge we have is not as widely known as it should be. I thought it would be helpful to remind all those present and anybody watching of the signs to look out for in adults, as set out by the UK Sepsis Trust: slurred speech or confusion; extreme shivering or muscle pain; passing no urine in a day; severe breathlessness; it feels like you are going to die; and skin mottled or discoloured. If you or another adult develops any of those signs, it is important to seek urgent medical attention.

John’s story highlights both the work we need to do to raise awareness of the early signs of sepsis and how we support those who have been diagnosed with it. There remains too little data on sepsis, with inconsistencies in the definitions used across the country. Office for National Statistics data indicates that sepsis was mentioned on the death certificate in 27,971 deaths in England in 2025, but that is almost certainly not the full story.

[Dr Gardner]

There is also the issue that the infection source is not recorded. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to make significant improvements to this if we are to prevent sepsis? It is a slight repetition, but the lack of data collection worries me.

[Jim Dickson]

Absolutely. The data problems are much wider than simply understanding who has died with sepsis as a related cause and who has suffered sepsis at some point in the system. All the prevention and early diagnosis issues that my hon. Friend has highlighted go to the heart of the problems we have with data, and I hope the Minister will address that in her response.

I very much welcome the sepsis modern service framework, which was published last July and contains a much-needed plan to improve prevention, recognition, diagnosis, treatment and recovery for people affected by sepsis. It should mean that doctors are equipped to spot sepsis sooner and improve outcomes for patients like John and others who have been mentioned this evening. I hope the Minister will outline how the modern service framework will change the way the NHS supports John and others recovering from sepsis, so that the delays he has experienced in getting his prosthetics and the delays other people have experienced in the system become a thing of the past.