A former British doctor, 56-year-old Harold Shipman, was found to have killed at least 215 of his patients.
An official report has confirmed Shipman as Britain's worst mass murderer.
According to the 2,000-page report, 171 of Shipman's victims were women and 44 were men, with the oldest being a 93-year-old woman and the youngest a 41-year-old man.
Shipman was convicted in January 2000 of killing 15 of his patients with lethal heroin injections and was sentenced to life imprisonment for each of the murders.
But an inquiry into the case has found that 215 deaths were "highly suspicious" while there was a "real suspicion" he could have claimed a further 45 victims.
The relatives of the victims have been informed of the inquiry conclusions, and given detailed analysis of individual cases. The findings were based on police and medical records as well as relatives' testimony.
Shipman began to murder his patients soon after he became a GP (General Practitioner) doctor in 1974. His first victim was Mrs Eva Lyons, whom he killed in March 1975 at the Abraham Ormerod Medical Practice in Todmorden, northern England.
Shipman has already been told by Home Secretary David Blunkett that he will die in prison. He will also be sent a copy of the report.
Dr. John Chisholm of the British Medical Association said: "There has been a tragic systems failure that allowed Shipman's crimes to go undetected for so many years. He has breached the trust of the public, and of the profession that he served so badly."
The report came at the end of the first phase of the inquiry, which scrutinized the circumstances surrounding the deaths of a total of 888 patients. The second phase will now look at how Shipman went undetected for so long and what changes should be made to ensure such crimes can never be repeated in the medical systems.
The inquiry is expected to make recommendations about the systems governing death and cremation certificates and the supply of controlled drugs to doctors.
(People's Daily July 20, 2002)
