“It was a landmark report and I felt very strongly that its lessons should be absorbed into the NHS,” she says.She was aware, however, that although she had found Ritchie’s investigations compulsive reading, it might be too much to expect all the GPs in her area to plough through it. This eventually got a response from the then health minister, Virginia Bottomley, and an inquiry by Jean Ritchie QC was commissioned.The Ritchie report was published in February 1994. As is normal after such inquiries, it was bought by all the health and social service authorities in the land and distributed to their senior executives to assimilate and learn from. Unusually, it did not end up stuffed in the collective “pending” tray, to fade from the collective memory.

Diane Desmulie, then director of commissioning with the Barking and Havering Family Health Services Authority (FHSA), read the Ritchie findings from cover to cover. At Christopher Clunis’s trial, in the summer of 1993, she called for a public inquiry. On hearing that Clunis was suing for damages she said: “I don’t believe he should benefit from my husband’s death”. She has now issued a civil writ against Christopher Clunis for criminal assault – this is the only legal option open to her; she cannot sue the health authority, because, as her solicitor, Sally Moore, explains, “The health authorities had no duty of care to Jayne or her husband, Jon, but they did have a legal responsibility for the care of Christopher Clunis”.Soon after her husband died, Jayne Zito – who had had first-hand knowledge of the mental health services, having worked as deputy manager of a rehabilitation unit for the mentally ill – declared that Jonathan’s death had been both predictable and avoidable.

Clunis, who is thought to be seeking damages in excess of pounds 50,000, is claiming that he was not given adequate care by Friern Hospital and that its negligence led to his being convicted of manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility, for which he was sent indefinitely to Rampton top security hospital.Jonathan Zito’s widow, Jayne, has been instrumental in keeping alive the debate about whether potentially dangerous patients should be released into the community. Only last week, Christopher Clunis’s solicitor launched a High Court action against Camden and Islington Health Authority for “failure to care”. Partly because the nightmare keeps recurring – official figures suggest that one person a month is killed by someone who has recently been in psychiatric care – and partly because the Zito/Clunis case itself is back in the news. At about 3.15pm on 17 December, at Finsbury Park Underground station in north London, 27-year-old Jonathan Zito was stabbed to death by Christopher Clunis, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic.Three years later that tragic event and its causes are still being debated furiously. Assorted doctors, police, social workers and nurses have been gathered together to watch a play that traces in vivid detail the descent of a man into mental illness, to the point where he carries out a brutal and random murder.
The roots of this performance lie in a similarly grey December day in 1992. The stage is set for a joint training session organised by the London Borough of Hillingdon Social Services and Hillingdon Health Agency, though “training session” is a dry description for the radical piece of theatre that will follow. “We would do the utmost with the organising committee to allow any solution to accept athletes.”North Korea boycotted the 1984 and 1988 Olympics but competed at the 1992 Barcelona Games.

The North Koreans have not competed in any major international sports competitions over the past year.. It is a rainy December afternoon in Uxbridge. Lead grey skies and a light drizzle do not show the already unprepossessing bulk of the Hillingdon Hospital staff social club in a good light Inside, chairs and tables have been pushed aside. “If anybody can deliver, we would only be pleased.”While the deadline for replies was 15 November, Carrard said the IOC would not reject a late entry from the North Koreans “We are trying not to penalise the athletes,” he said. The awards will be presented at the annual ITF World Champions’ Dinner in Paris during the French Open next May.. Olympic Games

The International Olympic Committee yesterday welcomed efforts by the former president Jimmy Carter to persuade North Korea to compete at next summer’s Atlanta Games.
Of the 197 nations invited by the IOC to send teams to Atlanta, North Korea is the only one that has not accepted.Carter, who sent a letter personally inviting the North Koreans to come, said Tuesday he had been informed by North Korea’s leaders that they “are reconsidering participating”.The IOC director general, Francois Carrard, said in Lausanne that he had received no new information concerning North Korea but hoped Carter’s initiative would succeed.”Anything which can contribute to bring all nations to the Games has to be encouraged,” he said. However, she will miss the Australian Open next month because of a chipped bone in her left foot.The ITF president, Brian Tobin, said: “Both Pete Sampras and Steffi Graf have played exceptional tennis this year and fully deserve to be recognised again as the best of the best.”The wheelchair world champions for 1995 were David Hall of Australia and Monique Kalkman of the Netherlands.

The German also won the season- ending WTA Tour Championship and suffered only two defeats during the year. Tennis

Pete Sampras and Steffi Graf have been named world champions for 1995 by the International Federation.
Sampras won the award for the third straight year, while Graf was named for the sixth time in the past nine years.Sampras won Wimbledon and the US Open, each for the third time, and was the runner-up in the Australian Open. He won three other tournaments and led the United States to victory in the Davis Cup final against Russia earlier this month.Graf, despite her father, Peter, being in prison on matters relating to tax evasion, won all three Grand Slam tournaments she entered: the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. She then placed third in a giant slalom in the same French resort, and she was third and second in two downhills during last weekend’s Austrian dominated races at St Anton..