Today, Ingrid Segerberg is a specialist in paediatrics and adolescent medicine at the University Children's Hospital in Uppsala.

The first time she encountered the condition abandonment syndrome was early in her career.

One of the children she met in the early 2010s experienced she was simulating her illness, and had parents who were pushing.

The other was seriously ill in a way she had never seen, neither before nor after.

- That has left me with an intellectual and ethical chafing, says Segerberg.

"A great shame"

She believes that children could appear seriously ill with reduced reflex patterns - but that one also saw between the fingers the cases where children were presented as seriously ill by their parents, even though it was easy to see that the children simulated.

- It was what rubbed, that we let it pass and through certificates rewarded the parents for keeping their children sick instead of confronting them and standing up for the children's right to health.

In 2019, the magazine Filter published testimonies from now adults stating that they were forced to play sick as children.

It shook Ingrid Segerberg.

- I felt a great shame about what I have been through and an anger towards my pediatrician who let this go on.

She and her colleagues began to discuss the issue, and changed their approach.

- The children in the Uppsala Region only recovered after we changed attitudes and began to see this as potential child protection issues and put pressure on the parents.

Wants healthcare to "speak freely"

In 2019, a few children were diagnosed with abandonment syndrome in the Uppsala Region.

The recovered years thereafter and since then no new ones have been entered.

In a debate article in Läkartidningen, Ingrid Segerberg has called for self-examination within the union, but thinks that the big debate has not taken place.

She wants to see a commission or inquiry where health care employees "are allowed to speak freely".

- There are very few children now who are ill in this way, but it is important that we learn something about what we have been through, she says and continues.

- The question mark that we should always have with us in all complicated cases where children are inexplicable, seriously ill, is whether it may be the parents who can not or do not want to look after their child's best interests.

We had completely neglected that, as I see it.