Girl died after being given wrong gas

A three-year-old girl died after mistakenly being given pure laughing gas at Newham General Hospital from an old anaesthetic machine not fitted with alarms which would have revealed the error, an inquest heard today.

Najiyah Hussain was taken to the hospital's Accident and Emergency department after suffering convulsions. There, senior consultant Andrew Hobart turned the wrong knob on the "Boyles machine", giving her pure nitrous oxide rather than life-saving oxygen.

Walthamstow Coroner's Court heard how Najiyah's heart rate plunged and she died later after a life-support machine was switched off. Today the inquest was told that anaesthetist Dr Leonard Coetzee, called to casualty as part of the "crash team " when Najiyah's condition deteriorated, spotted the error at once, called Mr Hobart and straight away turned up the oxygen.

Dr Coetzee told the inquest that the machine was working properly but it was an older model which was not fitted with an oxygen analyser which would have sounded an alarm if a patient was fed gas which could prove fatal. He said that now, such machines in Newham have the alarms.

The inquest heard how Mr Hobart immediately admitted his mistake to colleagues before going to the hospital's clinical director to report it. Until Dr Coetzee's arrival a team of doctors and nurses had been trying to revive Najiyah. However, none had noticed Mr Hobart's mistake. Coroner Elizabeth Staran told the inquest: "The facts are quite painfully clear. The doctor went straight to the clinical director and explained what had happened."

Earlier, Najiyah's sister Aysha Khatum told the inquest how the child had fallen ill in January last year. On the day she died her mother had taken her to her GP with a fever. She was given a flu jab but later Aysha learned she had been taken to hospital. An inquiry last year recommended Mr Hobart be allowed to carry on working because there was "no evidence of a record of carelessness or medical errors on his part".

The hearing continues.