System failure: Parents begged UK hospital to treat child, left to die

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: News Websites
27 Nov 2022 16:27

Yusuf Mahmud Nazir is another victim of the UK's austerity measures and welfare neglect.

Just 8 days after developing a sore throat, five-year-old Yusuf Mahmud Nazir dies after failure of the hospital to admit him.

Yusuf Mahmud Nazir, 5-year-old child of immigrants living in the UK, has passed away as a result of medical neglect in its most shocking and frustrating forms: Hospital bed shortage.

According to the child's uncle, Zaheer Ahmed, Nazir could have survived had hospital staff paid attention to his parents. Ahmed said he had begged Rotherham General Hospital staff to treat the child's sore throat, which was meant to be treated with intravenous antibiotics.

He told Sky News he also “begged and begged" for his nephew to be admitted, only to be told: “There are no beds and not enough doctors".

Dying of pneumonia on Monday, an autopsy revealed that the infection has spread to his lungs and caused multiple organ failures, which then lead to several cardiac arrests.

After that, the hospital launched a probe into the care the boy had received.

Expressing pain over a sore throat on November 13, Nazir's parents took him to a general practitioner where he was prescribed antibiotics. Just a day after, he was taken to the emergency department at Rotherham General Hospital, where the family waited for several hours before he was seen by a doctor. Nonetheless, he was sent home even though the doctor had said that what we saw was "the worst case of tonsillitis he had ever seen."

Nazir was distressed, struggling to breathe, and unable to swallow, according to his family. His health plummeted at home - his parents called an ambulance and insisted that he'd be taken into Sheffield Children's Hospital.

"If they would have treated him where we wanted him to be treated he would be here with us now," said Ahmed.

"He would have been here playing like he was. We've lost a beautiful child... it's not his fault. We begged and begged and begged for help. We couldn't get it. We just did not get the help we wanted or we needed or we should have got," said Ahmed.

"They kept saying to us, they kept saying to us, 'We've got one doctor. What do you want us to do? We've got no beds available. What do you want us to do? We've got no space for him. What do you want us to do?

"'Complain to the big people, don't complain to us. Complain to the big ones that only gave us one doctor'."

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman 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.