Flesh eating bug victim was told nothing's wrong

A LONDON man collapsed with a deadly flesh-eating infection and had to have a leg amputated - less than 24 hours after a hospital casualty department sent him home saying there was nothing wrong.

Doctors at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow told Mohsan Akhtar, 30, to take an aspirin for a swollen ankle which had left him feverish and barely able to walk.

The following day Mr Akhtar collapsed, fell into a coma for a month and awoke to be told his left leg had been amputated at thigh level.

Doctors told him he had been suffering from necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh-eating bacterial infection which proves fatal in 75 per cent of cases.

Mr Akhtar, formerly a keen footballer, has made a formal complaint against Northwick Park and an investigation has been launched.

Last week the Standard revealed how nursing staff at the hospital dragged an elderly man out of the casualty department, ignoring pleas for help from his relatives hours before he died.

The hospital was also strongly criticised after a 75-year-old woman was "left to die" in an assessment unit. Grandmother Bridget Shortt had suffered severe internal bleeding after being given drugs to stop her blood clotting.

She died three days later when the fatal side effects were not detected by staff.

Mr Akhtar, from Harrow, said: "I have spent the last year trying to come to terms with being an amputee and getting my life back.

I didn't really think about complaining to the hospital, but there seem to have been so many blunders in the health service and I think I may have been one of the victims.

"I don't feel bitter, but I am angry. The doctors who fitted my artificial limb said the infection should have been spotted at the first hospital. It's been very hard and I want some answers."

Mr Akhtar said his ankle became painful one night in April last year and by the next morning it had become so inflamed that he went to Northwick Park, his local hospital. "I had to wait quite a long time and they were obviously busy," he said. "My ankle hurt and I thought I had torn some ligaments playing football.

"When the doctor saw me, he said he couldn't see anything wrong. They took an x-ray but said they couldn't see anything and told me to go home and take some painkillers."

The next morning, Mr Akhtar decided to go to the casualty department at the Royal Free, which is opposite the newsagents' he runs in Hampstead.

"I could hardly walk and the pain was terrible," he said. "I don't know what happened next, I just remember waking up thinking a few minutes had gone by, but a nurse held my hand and said I had been in a coma for a month.

"I had collapsed and the doctors said it was touch and go about whether I would survive. At one point the infection was eating into me by four or five centimetres every 10 minutes.

"When they told me my leg had been amputated I was in shock for weeks. I kept having sensations where my leg used to be so it was very hard to come to terms with the fact it wasn't there."

Mr Akhtar, who lives with his parents, added: "It has changed my life. I used to be very outgoing but I'm single now and I have lost all my confidence in respect of women. I can't play football anymore, which was a big part of my life. I know the doctors are busy but if I hadn't gone to the Royal Free I would have died."

A spokeswoman for Northwick Park Hospital said: "We have received a letter of complaint from Mr Akhtar and we will be investigating his case."

Necrotizing fasciitis is a bacterial infection which attacks soft tissue. It can develop from a minor scratch. Approximately 30 to 60 people develop an advanced form of the infection in England and Wales each year and three quarters of them die.

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