The mother of a five-year-old boy who died after being sent home from a British hospital because of a “lack of beds” has told Sky News that the second report into his death has brought no closure for the family, while the NHS has been told there are no excuses for the tragedy.
Yusuf Nazir died in November 2022, soon after his mother Soniya had taken her ill son to Rotherham Hospital’s A&E only to be told “there were no beds available”.
Yusuf was eventually seen by a doctor but then sent home. His mother said the doctor told her Yusuf had the worst case of tonsillitis he had ever seen.
But the boy’s health continued to deteriorate, and Nazir called an ambulance to take him to the nearby specialist children’s hospital in Sheffield.
It was here, the report says, that various critical interventions were missed.
“I carried Yusuf to the nurse… he was floppy with his eyes rolled back, struggling to breathe,” she said. “The nurse said, ‘We’re too busy, we can’t get a doctor, you’ll have to wait’.”
Other patients in the waiting room intervened when they saw the boy gasping for air and struggling to breathe, but they were told Yusuf’s mother should approach the nurses herself if she were concerned.
This latest, second independent report was backed by Wes Streeting when he was shadow Health Secretary.
Instinct
A previous independent NHS report found no wrongdoing on the part of Rotherham Hospital. The family have described that report as a “whitewash”.
Their claim will be supported by this second report, which says: “It’s clear that across all settings – primary care, pre-hospital, emergency and inpatient – the healthcare system failed to truly hear the family’s voice.”
It says staff should have listened to the “mother’s instinct”.
“I knew he was very, very poorly, he was struggling to breathe, he was lethargic, he was floppy,” Nazir told Sky News.
“I knew that something was not right before they even escalated it to the ICU… but no one else picked it up.”
The Health Secretary told Sky News: “There are no excuses for the tragic failings in the lead up to Yusuf’s death….This independent report reveals their concerns were repeatedly not addressed across NHS services. It is now the responsibility of the NHS to implement the recommendations in this report.”
Part of the report’s key findings shows Yusuf had 23 separate healthcare contacts across four NHS organisations that were responsible for his care, but there was no co-ordinated record or oversight.
It found the clinical assessments were inconsistent and led to difficulties in comparing his condition over time. Routine care before his crisis was marked by a wait-and-see approach that failed to pre-empt worsening conditions.
It also recorded that clinical staff at Sheffield used an outdated cannula method that failed to give Yusuf potentially life-saving drugs.
Nazir said she pointed out the leaking cannula to Yusuf’s nurses, but her concerns were brushed aside.
“The cannula burst and the whole bed was full of his medication and blood on the morning he went to the ICU… the whole weekend he’d not had that medication,” she said.
“He’d have been in pain and he wouldn’t have been getting any better if he weren’t having the medication.
“From the moment he was in Sheffield Children’s Hospital until the end I think he didn’t get any treatment.”
Failed
Speaking at a news conference after the report was published, she said: “The report concludes (there were) 13 missed opportunities to escalate Yusuf’s care, all while I was trusting the NHS to protect him. They failed him catastrophically.”
Yusuf’s uncle, Zaheer Ahmed, said the family want an inquest to find out the boy’s cause of death.
“We still do not know how Yusuf died. We want answers. We want an inquest. And this is what the family is demanding.”
The investigation has made national recommendations, including consultant-led oversight on weekends and giving parents visibility of their child’s medical records.
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