An 81-year-old Nigerian doctor in the UK, who lied about his age to keep his job, has been jailed for three years after killing a patient during a routine bone marrow biopsy.
Dr Isyaka Mamman, now 85, had previously been suspended for lying about his date of birth when he carried out the fatal operation. Despite his dishonesty, he was re-employed in his former role as a specialist haematology doctor after serving his suspension.
Lawyers defending Mamman said his skill as a doctor was “considerably diminished”, reports The Telegraph.
At Manchester Crown Court, Mamman admitted the gross negligence manslaughter of mother-of-three Shahida Parveen at the Royal Oldham Hospital in September 2018.
Prosecutor Andrew Thomas QC said Parveen died during what “should have been a routine procedure” to take a sample of bone marrow.
At the time her death, Mamman had already served a one-year suspension imposed in 2004 by the General Medical Council’s fitness to practise tribunal for lying about his age to his employers.
His contract was terminated by the Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust but he was rehired by the Trust in December 2006 in his former role.
The decision to give him his job back was described by Justice Yip as “astonishing and extremely troubling” as he would have been past the compulsory retirement age at the time.
Employers used to be able to force workers to retire at 65, but this law was scrapped in April 2011, after a campaign by Age UK.
Thomas said Parveen was with her husband Khizar Mahmood when she went for the biopsy and gave her consent for the sample to be taken from her hip bone.
Having failed using this “conventional” approach, Mamman decided instead to take a sample from the sternum, an extremely rare procedure considered dangerous because the heart lies directly under the sternum. Parveen lost consciousness as soon as the needle was inserted but Mamman did not raise the alarm.
A nurse said Mahmood ran out shouting: “He killed her. I told him to stop three times but he did not listen.” Mahmood said: “(Dr Mamman) carried on forcefully putting the screwdriver inside her chest. There was blood everywhere, all around her neck and on the sheets.”
Thomas said the question of the doctor’s true age was “ a matter of controversy” as he does not have a birth certificate. He was born in rural Nigeria which did not have a birth registration system. He entered a medical college in Ibadan in 1958 and provided a birth date of 16 September 1936.
He registered as a doctor with the GMC in July 1965 and gave the same birth date. But at some point he claimed a later date of birth of 1941 when he obtained a Nigerian passport and this date was given to employers.
In 2001, he claimed an even later date of October 1947 which he relied upon for his naturalisation as a British citizen. Thomas said if this were true, he would have started his medical studies at the age of 10.
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