Flymiss, you have missed my point (which obviously wasn't made very clearly!!!). We were informed that there were 100+ sick people on board, yet it turns out that there were only a handful.
The pilot declared a PAN because he had lots of sick pax and crew. Whenever a pilot declares a pan then we will do our upmost to provide them with an expeditious routing and get them on the ground asap. Which we did, because that is our job.
If he had not declared, and had instead just "mentioned" the parlous state of the health of those on board, angling for a straight in, our hands are tied (as has been discussed on here many times in the past) and we are not in a position to do much out of the ordinary.
Pilots have tried this in the past when they have been running late, etc and it leads to an awful lot of work for those of us controlling everything else in the way.