Man Alive

The Life Sentence: Pamela (1967x29)

Air date: Aug 02, 1967

In 1943, when the war was at its height, a pretty girl of sixteen, crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, was admitted to a geriatric hospital in South London-a place only for old people. Today, twenty-four years later, she is still there, living in a hospital surrounded by the old and the dying. Pamela needs little medical attention, she is bright and intelligent. But Pamela has an official national health label: Young Chronic Sick. This two-part enquiry looks at conditions both inside and outside hospital for people like her - and there are at least three thousand like Pamela, sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in geriatric hospitals.