A FIVE-year-old boy who was sent home from A&E after his parents were told “there are no beds and not enough doctors” passed away days later.
Yusuf Mahmud Nazir died at Sheffield Children’s Hospital on November 23 2022, eight days after he was seen at Rotherham Hospital and sent home with antibiotics.
His family believe his death was a result of systems failures across the two hospitals, rather than the fault of individual doctors and nurses.
Yusuf, who had asthma, was taken to a GP with a sore throat and feeling unwell on November 15.
He was prescribed antibiotics by an advanced nurse practitioner.
Later that evening, his parents took him to Rotherham Hospital’s urgent and emergency care centre.
He was seen in the early hours of the morning after a six-hour wait.
Yusuf was discharged with a diagnosis of severe tonsillitis and an extended prescription of antibiotics.
His family claim staff told them “there are no beds and not enough doctors” in the emergency department at Rotherham.
They say Yusuf should have been admitted and given intravenous antibiotics.
Two days later Yusuf was given further antibiotics by his GP for a possible chest infection.
But after he began struggling to breathe, his family became so concerned they called an ambulance and insisted the paramedics take him to Sheffield Children’s Hospital rather than Rotherham.
Yusuf was admitted to the intensive care unit on November 21 but developed multi-organ failure and suffered several cardiac arrests which he did not survive.
A hearing took place at Sheffield Medico-Legal Centre on November 3.
A coroner told the court that an inquest into Yusuf’s death would start on April 13 next year.
Yusuf’s mother Soniya Ahmed attended Monday’s hearing, along with a number of other family members, including his uncle Zaheer Ahmed, who has led the campaign to fully investigate his nephew’s death.
Mr Ahmed said: “The inquest is going to give us the answers that we still do not have for Yusuf.
“We still don’t know how he’s died and, hopefully, this inquest will go into detail and give us answers.”
South Yorkshire assistant coroner Rebecca Connell said the full inquest will take three to four days.
She gave a provisional ruling that this will not be what’s known as an Article 2 hearing.
Article 2 inquests are held when there are questions over whether the state failed in its duty to protect a person’s life.
It allows coroners to widen the scope of their investigation.
Adam Wagner KC, for Yusuf’s family, argued the scope should be expanded because the family believe there were “a number of significant systems failures” in Sheffield and Rotherham which went beyond “individual nurses and doctors doing the wrong thing”.
Mr Wagner told the pre-inquest review hearing: “It’s arguable there was a systems failure and it’s arguable that a systems failure caused the death.”
The barrister said Yusuf’s parents will tell the inquest that they told doctors, nurses and paramedics “over and over again” his condition was much worse than they realised.
Susan Trigg, for Rotherham Hospital, told the hearing there was “no evidence of systems failings”.
What is tonsilitis and when to be worried
Tonsillitis is an infection of the tonsils at the sides of your throat. It’s a common childhood illness.
Tonsillitis can feel like a bad cold or flu. The tonsils at the sides of your throat will be red and swollen.
Symptoms in children and adults can include:
- A sore throat
- Problems swallowing
- A high temperature
- Coughing
- A headache
- Feeling and being sick
- Earache
- Feeling tired
Sometimes the symptoms can be more severe and include:
- Swollen, painful glands in your neck (feels like a lump on the side of your neck)
- Pus-filled spots or white patches on your tonsils
- Bad breath
You should see a GP if symptoms don’t go away after a week, or you keep getting throat infections.
Call 999 or go to A&E if:
- You have a severe sore throat that quickly gets worse
- You have swelling inside the mouth and throat
- You have difficulty speaking
- You cannot swallow
- You have difficulty breathing
- You have difficulty opening your mouth
Source: NHS
Yusuf’s family called for an inquest in the boy’s care following the publication of an NHS England report in July.
It made a range of recommendations for the NHS, concluding: “Our primary finding is that the parental concerns, particularly the mother’s instinct that her child was unwell, were repeatedly not addressed across services.”
Mrs Connell said that – based on the information she’d seen so far – the inquest wouldn’t be an Article 2 one, but told the hearing she would keep this under review.
The scope of the inquest will include Yusuf’s care and treatment at the two hospitals, his GP surgery and by Yorkshire Ambulance Service, during an eight-day period.
Mrs Connell said she believed the scope was “Article 2 compliant”.
Mr Ahmed said: “We are confident. The coroner said she is going to look at it as a thorough investigation and treat it as if it was an Article 2 inquest.”
The tot’s uncle previously told Good Morning Britain he “begged” Rotherham Hospital staff to admit Yusuf, but was told they couldn’t get beds out of “thin air”.
This was despite a doctor saying the child had “the worst case of tonsillitis he had ever seen”.
Mr Ahmed claimed: “I begged them, I begged them. I’ve never begged for anything in my life and I begged and I begged.
“I said he needs help, he needs treatment, can you please help him?
“They said ‘what do you want us to do? What do you want us to, find beds out of thin air? We haven’t got the space, we haven’t got the doctors, what do you want us to do?’”
The uncle and Yusuf’s mum Soniya met with Wes Streeting and then-health secretary Victoria Atkins in March last year, asking them to look into the case.
