Heartbroken family of boy, 5, who died after being sent home from hospital say he should be ‘still alive’

The heartbroken family of a little five-year-old boy, who died after being sent home from hospital, say he should be ‘still alive.’

Yusuf Mahmud Nazir died in November 2022 after getting tonsillitis, but now his loved ones have branded a review into the hospital who sent him home as being a “cover-up”.

Yusuf’s mum and uncle hit out at an independent report into the youngster’s death, claiming it left out 13 pages of relevant evidence.

Speaking to the Mirror, they said the report into the NHS hospital in Rotherham had not included crucial CCTV footage, WhatsApp messages, videos, pictures and witness testimonies that they said showed the seriousness of Yusuf’s condition was ignored.

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The pair are pleading with hospital bosses to learn lessons from the alleged failings in Yusuf’s case as they want to make sure no other family has to go through what they went through. They met Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting in Parliament where they criticised the Government for failing to get in touch with them despite requests and urged ministers to call for a new independent review into the case.

Speaking about the report that last October ruled Yusuf’s care at Rotherham General Hospital was appropriate, his uncle Zaheer Ahmed said: “It’s not an independent report at all. We believe as a family it’s a full cover-up, just to say we’ve ticked our boxes and we’ve done our investigation and there’s nothing we’ve done wrong.

“Ultimately it’s a five-year-old child that’s died – and it’s our child that’s died – and we know what they’ve done and they know what they’ve done. But they’re just trying to make out to the public that they’ve not done anything wrong and I don’t see why they’re doing that. If you’re not going to admit that you’ve done something wrong then how are you going to rectify it for the next child? Are they wanting to kill another five children before they decide: ‘Yes, let’s admit what we’ve done?’”

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Yusuf, who had asthma, was taken to A&E at Rotherham General Hospital with breathing difficulties eight days before he died. After waiting for more than six hours before being seen at around 5am, Mr Ahmed said the doctor saw Yusuf for about five to eight minutes, put a stick in his mouth, said he had tonsillitis and sent him home with oral antibiotics.

They said this was despite the family overhearing the doctor say “it was one of the worst cases of tonsillitis” he’d ever seen to other staff. Yusuf was struggling to breathe and was unable to drink, swallow or talk, with him using his hands to explain if he needed anything, so his mum had to try to force the medicine down the five-year-old’s throat, the family said. As his condition worsened, three days later the family took Yusuf to Sheffield Children’s Hospital, where he died five days later on November 23 after developing pneumonia.

Speaking about Yusuf’s care in Rotherham, Mr Ahmed said: “We felt as though he was just pushed away as they just didn’t have the time for it.” He said Yusuf was smiling, eating doughnuts and “running around and playing” the day he got a temperature and tonsillitis.

“Yusuf was a very happy little child, he was very active, very quiet, very independent and he was just full of energy and he had a long, long life ahead of him,” he said. “He was taken too early and it could have been prevented.”

Relevant evidence they say was left out of the review into Yusuf’s death includes the testimony of another mum who had called for urgent help after seeing his state in the hospital waiting room. Yusuf’s mum then took him to reception, where a nurse told them to sit back down and told the family “he’s just snoring ”, Mr Ahmed said.

He said the witness has been supporting them after hearing Yusuf’s story on the news and “bursting into tears” after recognising him in a photo. “She reached out to me on Facebook and said: ‘I’m here to help because I was the one who went to ask for help. I was shocked they just said: ‘No, we’re busy,’” she said.

They also presented evidence to Mr Streeting of a consultant at Sheffield Children’s Hospital who saw Yusuf at the end of his life who they claim said “earlier IV antibiotics may have helped prevent this from happening”.

Labour frontbencher Mr Streeting accused the report of “gaslighting” the family in their review into the case. “What’s happened in this case hasn’t brought anything like the closure this family deserves but has actually ended up gaslighting them because they were witness to these events, they were by Yusuf’s side throughout and they know what they have seen in the report, in terms of the factual account of the events, does not match up with their experience,” he said.

The Labour MP last year asked then-Health Secretary Steve Barclay to meet with the family multiple times but Mr Ahmed said they have heard “nothing” from the Government. Mr Streeting urged new Health Secretary Victoria Atkins to come in with a “fresh pair of eyes” and order a new independent review.

“There’s a fundamental thing here and that is that no child should be dying of tonsillitis,” he said. “The report that has been published varies enormously with the report that the family were shown only days before final publication. It has led the family to feel like their voices have been lost, the experience that Yusuf and his family went through has been whitewashed and sanitised so what we now see in public is only a partial account of what really happened.”

Dr Jo Beahan, Medical Director at The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, said: “All of us were incredibly saddened by Yusuf’s tragic death. Our thoughts and sympathies continue to be with Yusuf’s family. We fully cooperated with the independent investigation into Yusuf’s death which was published in October, which found the medical care provided to Yusuf in Rotherham’s Urgent and Emergency Care Centre was appropriate, and there was nothing that could have been done differently that would have changed the tragic outcome.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “Our heartfelt sympathies go out to the family of Yusuf Nazir and we remain determined to learn from the tragic circumstances surrounding his death.

“The local care board published the results of a full investigation in October last year and we are committed to ensuring the NHS listens to, learns from and acts on these findings to help improve the safety and quality of services. In October last year we set up the Health Service Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) to independently investigate patient safety concerns and provide system-wide learning.”

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