Doctor gets suspended prison sentence for not giving priority to “very sick boy”

A paediatrician found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter after a 6 year old boy in her care died of septic shock has been sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for two years.

Hadiza Gawa-Barba, 39, was a specialist paediatric registrar at Leicester Royal Infirmary when Jack Adcock, who had Down’s syndrome, was admitted with vomiting, diarrhoea, and breathlessness in February 2011.1 She diagnosed gastroenteritis but failed to notice “seriously abnormal” blood test results showing that his kidneys were shutting down.

When Jack went into cardiac arrest Gawa-Barba stopped the …