Conservative Party MP Craig Mackinlay, who lost limbs to sepsis, returned to the British parliament, The Independent reported.
Mackinlay joked on Wednesday that he wanted other people to call him a “bionic MP,” drawing applause when he first appeared in the House of Commons after his ordeal.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak paid tribute to him and said he was in “awe” at such an incredible resilience. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also praised his “courage and determination.”
South Thanet MP Craig Mackinlay was hospitalised with septic shock last September. Doctors put him into a 16-day induced coma. His chances of survival stood at just five per, but he but survived and said he was “extremely lucky to be alive.”
I haven’t got a medical degree but I know what dead things look like. I was surprisingly stoic about it… I don’t know why I was. It might have been the various cocktail of drugs I was on.
The MP now uses prosthetic limbs. He plans to campaign for early diagnosis of the condition that nearly killed him, arguing that it is vital that the National Health Service “recognises sepsis at the earliest opportunity.”
“When children come to parliament’s fantastic education centre, I want them to be pulling their parents’ jacket or skirts or their teacher and saying: ‘I want to see the bionic MP today’.”
He also spoke about the sense of loss that amputations still trigger for him.
You do get a little one every morning because you’re in the land of nod having a nice dream, and then you wake up and it’s ‘I haven’t got any hands’. You’ve got to be cheerful and positive about things you can do and I find every day there’s something new that I can do. None of this would be possible without my wife… I wouldn’t be where I am today without her.
Earlier, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak apologised “sincerely and unequivocally” to the victims of the contaminated blood scandal, stating that it was “a day of shame for the British state.” He apologised in a packed House of Commons hours after Brian Langstaff published his report accusing the British government of covering up the disaster.
This is a day of shame for the British state. Today’s report shows a decades-long moral failure at the heart of our national life – from the National Health Service to the civil service to ministers in successive governments at every level – that people and institutions in which we place our trust failed in the most harrowing and devastating way.
