Now GMC is branded racist after banning sepsis doctor
THE doctors’ watchdog has been accused of racism for striking off a paediatrician over the death of a child. Hadiza Bawa- Garba was barred by the General Medical Council for making fatal errors while caring for six-year- old Jack Adcock, who had sepsis.
But a leading professional body claims its decision was partly motivated by racism.
The British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, which represents 5,000 doctors, said a white doctor in the same circumstances would have been treated more leniently.
Dr Ramesh Mehta, the president, who is also a paediatrician, said the GMC may have been partly influenced by the fact that Bawa-Garba, a Muslim who moved to Britain from her native Nigeria in 1994, wears a headscarf.
He said: ‘We are saying that racism is one of the parts of it, it’s not the only part.
‘If it was a white doctor who was affected, we believe that the whole system and their approach to the case would have been different.’
The case has angered doctors and many are threatening to stop reporting their own mistakes, for fear of suffering the same fate.
Later today, doctors will stage a protest outside the GMC offices in London.
Jack Adcock – who had Down’s Syndrome and a heart condition – was admitted to the Leicester Royal Infirmary on February 18,
‘Different for a white doctor’
2011 with breathing difficulties and vomiting. He died 11 hours later.
He was seen by BawaGarba, the most senior doctor on the shift, who had just returned from 13 months of maternity leave.
She initially diagnosed him with a stomach bug, when he in fact had the life-threatening condition sepsis. Later, she failed to act on blood test results which showed he had a kidney infection.
On that shift, however, she was performing the roles of three doctors and overseeing six wards because the hospital was so understaffed.
Bawa-Garba, now 40, was initially handed a 12-month suspension by an independent panel, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, last June. But in an unprece- dented move, the GMC overturned this ruling in the High Court and Bawa-Garba was struck off on January 25.
Dr Mehta, 70, who used to work for the GMC assessing the skills of international doctors and was a consultant paediatrician at Bedford Hospital, said: ‘It is likely to be related to racism – at least in part – and this could be direct or indirect.’
He said indirect racism is where an organisation or its members has unconscious prejudices. Direct racism, on the other hand, means they are discriminating against a person intentionally.
Charlie Massey, chief executive of the GMC, said: ‘We take our responsibility to be a fair and transparent regulator very seriously.
‘Research has indicated that it is the nature and seriousness of allegations that is the primary driver of the outcome of a referral or investigation, rather than ethnicity.’