Paediatrician in boy’s negligence case wins her bid to be reinstated

A PAEDIATRICIAN convicted of gross negligence manslaughter over the death of six-year-old Jack Adcock said she was “very pleased” after winning her bid to be reinstated to the medical register.

Hadiza Bawa-Garba fought a decision made in January by two High Court judges to substitute erasure for the lesser sanction of a year’s suspension imposed by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal (MPT) in June last year.

The ruling followed a successful appeal by the General Medical Council (GMC), which argued that suspension was “not sufficient” to protect the public or maintain public confidence in the medical profession.

Yesterday, the Court of Appeal unanimously allowed her challenge and said her name should be restored to the medical register forthwith.

Her case was remitted to the MPT for review of the suspension, which will remain in place in the meantime.

Dr Bawa-Garba said: “I’m very pleased with the outcome but I want to pay tribute and remember Jack Adcock, a wonderful little boy that started the story.

“I want to let the parents know that I’m sorry for my role in what has happened to Jack.

“I also want to acknowledge and give gratitude to people around the world from the public to the medical community who have supported me.

“I’m very overwhelmed by the generosity and I’m really grateful for that.”

Jack, from Glen Parva, Leicestershire – who had Down’s syndrome and a heart condition – died at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011 after he developed sepsis.

In 2015, at Nottingham Crown Court, Dr Bawa-Garba was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for two years.

The judge said neither she nor a nurse who was on duty “gave Jack the priority which this very sick boy deserved”.

Giving the appeal court’s ruling, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Terence Etherton, said: “Undoubtedly, there are some cases where the facts are such that the most severe sanction, erasure from the medical register, is the only proper and reasonable sanction. This is not one of them.

“Once it is understood that it was permissible for the tribunal to take into account the full context of Jack’s death, including the range of persons bearing responsibility for that tragedy and the systemic failings of the hospital, as well as the other matters relied upon by Dr Bawa-Garba, and that the tribunal plainly had in mind its overriding obligation to protect the public for the future, it is impossible to say that the suspension sanction imposed by the tribunal was not one properly open to it and that the only sanction properly and reasonably available was erasure.”

He added: “The present case is unusual.

“No concerns have ever been raised about the clinical competence of Dr Bawa-Garba, other than in relation to Jack’s death, even though she continued to be employed at the hospital until her conviction.

“The evidence before the tribunal was that she was in the top third of her specialist trainee cohort.

“The tribunal was satisfied that her deficient actions in relation to Jack were neither deliberate nor reckless, that she had remedied the deficiencies in her clinical skills and did not present a continuing risk to patients.”