Health Secretary meets parents of five-year-old Yorkshire boy who died after being sent home from A&E

Yusuf Mahmud Nazir died on November 23 2022 – eight days after he was seen at Rotherham Hospital and sent home with antibiotics.

A report into Yusuf’s NHS case published last year found that his care was appropriate and “an admission was not clinically required”, but this was rejected by his family.

Yusuf’s uncle, Zaheer Ahmed, has insisted they were told “there are no beds and not enough doctors” and complained that he should have been admitted and given intravenous antibiotics in Rotherham.

Mr Ahmed and other family members met with Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting last week, and then with the Health Secretary yesterday afternoon.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr Ahmed said: “He should have been admitted on that day, he should have been given IV antibiotics on that day, and he wouldn’t have died.”

He said the NHS report published in October missed out a range of evidence, and the final version had 13 pages redacted from the version he was first given.

Mr Ahmed said: “This is not independent at all. There’s a lot of things missing out of it. Thirteen pages have been taken out of it. Everything about Yusuf has been taken out.”

He said: “An honest fair investigation by a completely independent body. That’s what we’re wanting.”

The report published by NHS South Yorkshire concluded: “We consider that on the basis of Yusuf’s observations, presentation and diagnosis there was a reasonable expectation that the antibiotics prescribed were appropriate and an admission was not clinically required.”

It also concluded that “a bed would have been found” if an admission had been deemed necessary.

Dr Jo Beahan, medical director at The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Given the concerns raised by Yusuf’s family at the time, an independent investigation was commissioned by the South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board.

“The independent investigation found that, sadly, there was nothing that could have been done differently that would have saved Yusuf’s life.”