Disgraced surgeon ‘took my life away’, former footballer says

A former professional footballer who said his career was ruined after a botched back surgery has told how the surgeon “took my life away”.

Iain Jenkins, 53, played for Everton, Chester City, Dundee United, Shrewsbury Town and internationally for Northern Ireland in his career.

When he signed for Dundee United in 1998, he began experiencing lower back problems and was referred to Fernbrae private hospital in Dundee, where Sam Eljamel worked as a neurosurgeon.

A public inquiry into Eljamel’s practice is taking place after patients of the former neurosurgeon, originally from Libya, raised concerns he had harmed as many as 200 people, with some said to have suffered life-changing injuries.

Mr Eljamel was head of neurosurgery at Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital from 1995 until his suspension in December 2013.

Following his suspension, the surgeon resigned from his post in May 2014 and removed himself from the General Medical Register in 2015. He is since thought to have returned to Libya.

Mr Jenkins, who now works as an elite performance coach with the Scottish Football Association, claims the practitioner performed bad surgery on his back, leading to the decline of his professional playing career.

“He was charming, he looked professional, he filled me full of confidence,” Mr Jenkins said on BBC Radio Scotland Breakfast, recalling his first meeting with Mr Eljamel in 1999.

The surgeon told Mr Jenkins he would have to operate on his back, giving him a 70% chance of success for the procedure.

He told the programme: “You put your trust in these guys, I had had operations when I was playing down south previously, I had operations when I was playing international football.

“So, you put your trust in these professional people. He was very, very charming, very smartly dressed and when you go into the private hospital in Dundee you expect to be treated with the best possible care.”

After the surgery was carried out in 1999, Mr Jenkins said his back problems worsened.

He said: “I started deteriorating quite quickly, they were trying to bring me back at Dundee United, they gave me fitness programmes.

“I continuously failed, I continuously started to feel my fitness going.

“I just struggled and I was deteriorating quite quickly.

“When I was at Dundee United, I never regained my full fitness and ended up being released.”

He was then signed by Shrewsbury Town but says he began experiencing “major problems” down his entire left side.

He had another two surgeries around three months apart in an effort to rectify his back problems, but recalled a top surgeon in England telling him: “Iain, your days are numbered, you’re not going to come back from this surgery.”

Mr Jenkins said: “I didn’t put two and two together, because I put my trust in this person, and I was just sat there in the house one day and his face flashed up on the TV.

“It sort of twigged on me a little bit, he operated on my spine and two years later I was retired from football, from international football, from Premier League football.

“He’s took my life away from me, he stole my living.”

With the public inquiry now taking place, he said: “I just want to see answers really, I don’t want to see apologies, I want to see answers.

“I wasn’t a big Steven Gerrard or a David Beckham footballer, I was quite a modest footballer who just earned a living out of the game, but I have got a very, very small percentage now of a platform to support these people and to try to help these people and just to get answers.

“Why, for instance, was that person allowed to spin that knife and play Russian roulette on my spine?

“Why was he allowed to do that? Because unfortunately I picked red and it went black.

“So, if I can get answers for other people as well as me I feel as if I have helped somehow.”

He said he is in pain every day and that he has subsequently “missed out on so much” with his children growing up.

“The pain I go through on a daily basis is not very nice at all,” he said.

When asked if he is still angry at what happened, he said: “Very angry – the more and more I speak about it, the more and more I get upset about it.

“I kept it private because I’m a very private person, I kept it private for many, many years, but now all of a sudden I am reading articles in the press and I am angry.

“He’s took my dignity, he’s took my pride away from me, he’s took my livelihood away from me, he’s took my profession away from me, so, yes, I am extremely angry and annoyed.”