Yusuf Mahmud Nazir, five, was not admitted to hospital despite his uncle “begging” for help as his condition worsened, his family say.
Image source, On behalf of Yusuf Nazir’s familyA five-year-old boy who died after being sent home from a hospital could have been saved if he was treated earlier, his family has claimed.
Yusuf Mahmud Nazir’s uncle said he had “begged” staff at Rotherham Hospital to treat his nephew’s severe throat infection with intravenous antibiotics.
He said he was told the children’s ward had “not got the doctors” and “not got the beds”. Yusuf died on Monday.
The hospital trust has begun an investigation into what happened.
Zaheer Ahmed said Yusuf fell ill with a sore throat on 13 November. The following day he went to his GP and was prescribed antibiotics.
When the boy’s condition worsened he was taken to Rotherham Hospital in South Yorkshire.
After waiting for hours Yusuf was seen by a doctor who, according to Mr Ahmed, told him that the child had “the worse case of tonsillitis he had ever seen”.
Despite the diagnosis he was not admitted to hospital.
‘Queues of kids’
When Yusuf’s condition deteriorated further, Mr Ahmed said he called the children’s ward at the hospital.
“We were begging them for their help,” he said.
“I said ‘Please can you help me I’ve got nobody else to go to. He needs IV antibiotics, he’s struggling breathing’.
“They didn’t want to know. They just said ‘We’ve not got the doctors, we’ve not got the beds. I can’t just pull a bed out of the air’.
“‘We’ve got queues of kids waiting it’s not just your child’ and I said ‘Yeah, but he needs this treatment’.
“‘So do other children’ – that’s exactly the response I got.”
Two days later, Yusuf was unable to speak, eat or drink so was taken by ambulance to Sheffield Children’s Hospital.
After being given intravenous antibiotics, Mr Ahmed said his nephew seemed to improve and started drinking and eating again. However, his condition deteriorated and he died.
“The infection – what should have been treated in Rotherham – just spread to his chest, spread to to his lungs… organ failures and just taken his life from there,” said the boy’s uncle.
“If he had got IV antibiotics, he would have been here. He would have be playing with us now, if he got that when I begged them.”
Mr Ahmed said the family wanted answers from the hospital and the government to prevent future deaths.
“I don’t know if it would have been a different situation if they did have the beds or weren’t overwhelmed,” he said.
Image source, Google
Dr Richard Jenkins, chief executive of The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, offered his “sincere condolences to Yusuf’s family”.
“We have commenced a thorough investigation into Yusuf’s care, which will include liaison with Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust,” he said.
“I want to assure families that we have an appropriately staffed medical paediatric service who provide support to our medical colleagues working within our Urgent Emergency Care Centre when required.
“We, like other district general hospitals in the South Yorkshire region, do not provide paediatric intensive care beds.
“The Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist trust who do provide paediatric intensive care beds.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “All children deserve the highest levels of care and we are taking urgent action to ensure no families have to experience these kinds of tragedies.
“Last week we announced up to £8bn for health and social care in 2024-25 and we’re giving an extra £500m to speed up hospital discharge and free up beds, ensuring people are only in hospital for as long as they need to be.”
Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to yorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk.