Manchester Crown Court, UK, has jailed Nigerian-born doctor, Dr Isyaka Mamman, 85, for killing a mother-of-three during a botched procedure.
The doctor had pleaded guilty to gross negligence manslaughter over the death of Shahida Parveen, 48, in 2018 at the Royal Oldham Hospital and was sentenced to three years imprisonment.
Dr Mamman was 81 at the time and had already been suspended for lying about his age.
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He used the wrong needle and inserted it in the wrong place, piercing the sac holding Ms Perveen’s heart.
Ms Justice Yip held that the death was his main responsibility but the hospital should have done more after Dr Mamman had lied about his age and botched two earlier similar procedures, injuring patients.
Parveen, 48, had gone to the hospital with her husband, Khizar Mahmood, for investigations into possible myeloproliferative disorder, the court heard.
A bone marrow biopsy had been advised thereafter and the routine procedure was allocated to Mamman, who was working as a specialty doctor in haematology, Andrew Thomas QC, prosecuting, said.
Bone marrow samples are usually taken from the hip bone, but Mamman failed to obtain a sample on the first attempt. Instead, he attempted a rare and “highly dangerous” procedure of getting a sample from Ms Parveen’s sternum – despite objections from the patient and her husband.
During the process, Mamman missed the bone and pierced her pericardium,(, the sac containing the heart) using the wrong biopsy needle and causing massive internal bleeding.
Ms Parveen lost consciousness immediately the needle was inserted. Her husband, running from the room shouted: “He killed her. I told him to stop three times and he did not listen. He killed her.”
A crash team arrived but Ms Parveen was confirmed dead later that day, 3 September 2018.
Mamman was qualified as a doctor in Nigeria in 1965 and had worked in the UK since 1991. From 2004 until the time of the fatal incident he was employed by the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.
The court heard that his “true age” remained a matter of “controversy,” as his birthplace in rural Nigeria had no system of birth registration.
During his medical training he presented his date of birth– September 16, 1936, which meant that he was 21 years old when he began his medical training and 81 at the time of the fatal hospital incident.
It was learnt that he knocked years off his age by adopting a birth date in 1941, provided to the NHS, suggesting he began his medical degree at the age of 16.
However, in about 2001 and approaching the initial compulsory retirement age of 65, Mamman adopted an even later birth date – October 1947 – which he relied upon in an application for naturalisation as a British citizen – suggesting he started his degree course at the age of 10.
In 2004 he was found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council and suspended for 12 months for lying about his age.
The Pennine Trust sacked him but then re-employed him in 2006 after he had been restored to the register by the GMC, who accepted his date of birth to be 1943 – which meant he was 14 or 15 when he began his medical degree.
Mamman’s name on the GMC medical register is Isyaka Mamman-Aka’aba and his licence to practise is suspended.
After the case, the hospital announced that it had admitted liability according to a civil claim brought by Parveen’s family.
