By Sheila Mckenzie-
Whipps Cross hospital failed an eight months pregnant teacher from Leyton who died during last August’s Covid spike, and would likely have saved her life had they provided appropriate medical care to her, an inquest has found.
Sumera Haq, a 37-year-old teacher at South Grove Primary School in Walthamstow, died on 14th August last year from multiple organ failure, Covid-19 and an aggressive internal bleed. An inquest found that lack of clinical leadership at the hospital led to her death, though it wouldn’t be surprising if her name was listed among the statistics of those who died from Covid-19.
Her husband Kasim Butt told an inquest that she first reported stomach pain to the hospital on 31st July, but was falsely told it was muscle pain from her Covid cough.
Sumera was later admitted to the maternity ward on 7th August, but moved to an acute ward two days later because maternity nurses were not confident they could treat her Covid-related pneumonia.
This was an “inappropriate” place for her, according to east London coroner Nadia Persaud, but a lack of beds in critical care and a staff shortage in the maternity unit meant she stayed there until going into cardiac arrest on the 12th.
In his evidence to the inquest, Kasim said: “They said our baby had died and they had rushed her to theatre because she had a bleed in her stomach. I was left in shock and lost all my senses.
“They asked me if I wanted to see my daughter, which I did. Ayra was beautiful and I just held her and cried my eyes out in that room for at least an hour.”
Despite being moved to the intensive care unit, Sumera died two days later. Kasim added: “It was the hardest moment of my life watching her slip away.
“I could not stop thinking about our two children, who are seven and four, and how I would tell them that mummy is not coming home.
“She was an amazing wife, very loving, very caring and always giving. She was passionate about teaching and had been a primary school teacher for at least ten years.”
He added that an external consultant, Dr Mamoun Abu-Habsa, told him at the time that he felt “something had gone terribly wrong” with her care.
While the maternity ward, where Sumera was first admitted, had a nurse for every two patients, the nurses on the acute ward were responsible for six patients each.
In the two days before her sudden collapse, doctors on the acute ward also failed to check her blood results, which showed “concerningly low” haemoglobin.
Sumera with her husband Kasim and their children
Avoided
In her concluding statements, Ms Persaud said Sumera’s death “is likely to have been avoided” if she had been “cared for in an appropriate setting”, if her concerning blood results had been investigated or if she had received “early medical attention” after she began deteriorating on the 12th.
She concluded: “Her death was contributed to by lack of clinical leadership and lack of close monitoring.”
During the inquest, she asked Dr Jason Gittens, Whipps’ clinical lead for critical care, why Sumera was not either admitted to critical care or moved to another hospital.
Dr Gitten said: “It’s very easy to say this in retrospect but a lot was happening at the time. We had to take into consideration the safety of other patients, including those also outside critical care who were at 40 and 60% oxygen.
“On that day, bed occupancy was 100%. [Admitting her] would mean either having to transfer another patient out or transferring her to another hospital.
“Transferring patients does carry a risk and you also have to be sure that the [other] hospital has the capacity, you do not want to transfer someone to the same situation.”
Ms Persaud responded: “I completely understand that this was not an easy time for the hospital… but it was reasonably foreseeable that she could have a rapid deterioration. What she needed was close monitoring and that was not provided to her on the acute ward.”
Vital Lessons
Taylor Hackett, a medical negligence lawyer at Irwin Mitchell who represented Kasim, added: “It’s now vital that lessons are learned following the several concerns that the inquest has identified in Sumera’s care.
“In the meantime, we’ll continue to support the family to help them try and come to terms with their loss the best they can at this distressing time.”
An inquest found a “lack of clinical leadership” at Whipps Cross Hospital in east London contributed to Ms Haq’s death, her grieving husband, Kasim Butt, 41, has spoken out to call for “lessons to be learned” from the tragedy.
Whipps Cross hospital is becoming notorious for negligent health care. We recently exposed a disgraceful failing at Whipps Cross when a man abandoned for 10 hours eventually died of heart failure. The hospital irresponsibly cited claims of a medic that he would have died anyway, as though that freed them of blame.
In 2013 , The Care Quality Commission (CQC), the NHS care watchdog, has castigated Barts Health NHS Trust for the “very serious concerns” its inspectors found when they staged two unannounced inspections in several key departments at Whipps Cross University hospital in east London in May and June of that year. Ten years later, not much appears to have changed when it comes to efficiency.
Pain
Her husband Kasim Butt expressed the inexpressible pain the family is still feeling over his wife’s death.
“It’s almost impossible to find the words to describe the hurt and pain our family feel. The last year has been a living nightmare which I wouldn’t wish on anyone”, said Mr Butt, who works as a delivery driver.“ For nearly a year we’ve had so many questions about what happened. While the inquest and listening to the evidence has been incredibly traumatic it was something I needed to do to honour Sumera’s memory.
“I know nothing can bring Sumera back, or fill the void in our lives, but our family take some comfort in at least now having some answers to our questions. I just hope nobody else has to go through the pain we have.”
Ms Haq, a teacher of years 3 and 4 at South Grove Primary School in Walthamstow since September 2018, was diagnosed with covid pneumonitis when admitted to hospital on August 7, 2021, and was found to be suffering from a serious kidney injury before she suffered a cardiac arrest on August 12. She died on August 14.
Following an inquest at East London Coroners Court, Coroner Nadia Persaud criticised the decision to transfer Ms Haq from a labour ward to a medical ward, that she did not have a consultant in charge of her care, a wrong decision to give her blood thinners shortly before the cardiac arrest, and a lack of “adequate emergency action” as her condition deteriorated.
“It’s now vital that lessons are learned following the several concerns that the inquest has identified in Sumera’s care”, said Taylor Hackett, an expert medical negligence lawyer at Irwin Mitchell which is representing Mr Butt.
In a tribute to his wife, Mr Butt said: “Sumera was a wonderful wife and the best mum any child could ever want. She went out of her way to help others and her death at an age when she had her best years ahead of her, has been particularly difficult to come to terms with.
“Those few days and trying to come to terms with the death of Ayra, whilst Sumera was also slipping away from us is something I’m not sure I’ll ever get over.”
“When I saw Ayra she was beautiful. I just held her and cried my eyes out. I’ll cherish what little but precious time I had with her.
“Being at Sumera’s bedside and holding her hand as her body shut down in front of my eyes and knowing there wasn’t anything I could do to help or save her was heart-breaking.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about our other children and how I was going to tell them their mummy wasn’t coming home.”
In the wake of her death, more than £20,000 was raised by well-wishers to be donated to orphanages in Third World countries.
The inquest concluded Ms Haq died from multiple organ failure, abdominal bleeding, covid-19 infection, and pneumonia.