UK: NHS Doc Suspended For Negligently Killing Child Allowed to Practice Again After Racism Accusations

The mother of a boy who died after a paediatrician mishandled his case has hit out at the decision to reinstate her.

Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba was struck off in January after being convicted of gross negligence manslaughter over the death of six-year-old Jack Adcock.

But she challenged the decision at the Court of Appeal, which yesterday unanimously ruled her name should be restored to the medical register and a previous punishment of of a year’s suspension was sufficient.

[...]Jack, from Glen Parva, Leicestershire – who had Down’s syndrome and a heart condition – died at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011 after he developed sepsis.

In 2015 Dr Bawa-Garba was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for two years at Nottingham Crown Court.

The judge said neither she nor a nurse who was on duty ‘gave Jack the priority which this very sick boy deserved’, which included a misdiagnosis from the paediatrician.

She had also mistakenly marked him as ‘do not resuscitate’ after confusing him with another patient.

Dr Ramesh Mehta, the president of the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, who was also in court, said the case of Bawa-Garba, who is from Nigeria, had exposed issues of diversity within medical malpractice claims.

“We believe that if [Bawa-Garba] was white she would not have landed in this spot – we are very clear about it,” Mehta said. “There are so many other cases where this has happened and other people got nothing, while black and minority ethnic doctors get punished.”