When you take your sick child to the doctors or the hospital then you are putting your most precious possession into the hands of people that you should have a reasonable expectation of being trustworthy and competent. Unfortunately for a great many young patients and their parents who took their children to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London this trust appears to have been misplaced.

A recent report in The Times of London told the horrific tale of 721 young patients at Great Ormond Street orthopaedic unit whose cases are being reviewed by the hospital following concerns being raised about the competence and attitude of a surgeon at this hospital. The alleged competence issues have not only led to patients getting inappropriate or wrong treatment but which has also led at least one child to have to have a limb amputated and others to have been left in long term severe pain.

The Times said:

With his confident air, Yaser Jabbar was a reassuring presence for parents on the orthopaedic ward of Great Ormond Street Hospital.

So when the 43-year-old surgeon told the parents of a six-year-old about the leg-straightening and lengthening procedure he planned to perform on their child, he had their full trust. They were unaware Jabbar’s colleagues were concerned about his safety, and fearful he was harming children in his care.

In July 2021, Jabbar operated on the boy at the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) lower limb reconstruction service in north London, which every year performs surgery on hundreds of children with illnesses or congenital deformities.

The procedure involves surgically breaking the bone then inserting metal rings, known as Ilizarov frames, and tension wires to hold the leg in place. Over the following months, the break is slowly widened by millimetres, allowing new bone to develop and fill the gap. Jabbar performed so many of the operations, he was referred to at the hospital as “the frame guy”.

Immediately after the surgery, however, the boy’s father, who asked not to be identified, knew something was wrong. “In all of our meetings prior to my child’s surgery we were told a certain type of frame would be used to help rotation and lengthening, but when the procedure was done a completely different frame was used. We were never told why, but it seemed strange,” he said.

“After a couple of days the frame became loose and my child was in a lot of pain. You could feel the bone in his leg, which felt out of position, like it wasn’t lined up and was protruding the wrong way. We feared something was wrong but when we raised it with Mr Jabbar he was very dismissive and said it was fine.”

As the report in the Times states this was not the only child to be allegedly left in pain and difficulty by Mr Jabbar.

The Times continued:

At least one child has had a leg amputated because of complications following surgery by Jabbar. Another child is facing the threat of amputation if surgeons at other hospitals cannot save the limb. One of those harmed was just four months old at the point of surgery.

Other youngsters have been left with legs at different lengths, some by as much as 20cm. Some are living with chronic pain years after their operations and have endured multiple follow-up surgeries. Other injuries include muscle damage, nerve injuries and permanent deformities.

Jabbar stepped down from his role at GOSH last September after an 11-month sabbatical on full pay, agreed after concerns had been raised about his conduct.

When I look at this case I find myself being astonished that the concerns that were raised about Mr Jabbar were not raised or investigated much earlier than they were. After all these incidents did not occur in some back street, run down GP surgery run by incompetents, this happened in the UK’s premier children’s hospital.

Despite Great Ormond Street’s public image as being a pinnacle of knowledge and competence in paediatric medicine it appears that along with much of the NHS it has not lived up to the reputation that the hospital has with the public. No doctor or other medic is flawless or competent in all things and mistakes and misdiagnosis can happen in even the most competent medical establishments but for there to be the need to reevaluate 721 individual cases at the most well known children’s hospital in the country is extremely worrying. Why were not the queries from parents and other medics about how these children were being treated not investigated earlier and this surgeon prevented from carrying out the operations in question or at the very least be ordered to only carry out these procedures under close supervision.

That there could be so many of these cases that need to be re-examined suggests that the culture of the NHS, a culture that sees the NHS as primarily serving the needs of its staff rather than the needs of patients, has done a great deal of damage, possibly lifelong damage, to children who, along with their parents, thought that the treatment that was being offered was the best possible. The children who were allegedly poorly treated by Mr Jabbar have, like so many other Britons, been let down immensely by the NHS. They trusted the NHS and the assurances of NHS staff but were treated extremely poorly. We and our children deserve much better than we are getting from the NHS.