A four-year-old boy died after doctors failed to diagnosis him with meningitis; instead treating him for tonsillitis, the little boy’s mother has claimed.
Danny Pearce had been taken to South East London’s Lewisham hospital when he began vomiting and not being able to eat.
His mother, Amy, claims that medics at the hospital diagnosed him with tonsillitis and then sent him home, but by the following day he was dead. He was killed by a form of meningitis called meningococcal septicaemia.
“We were told he had viral tonsillitis and they sent him home,” Ms Pearce said. “I found him unconscious in bed at 7.30am the next day, covered in a purple rash.”
Now, after a three-year court battle, Lewisham hospital has paid an out-of-court settlement to Ms Pearce.
“For a long time I blamed myself for Danny’s death but now we’ve got the settlement I at least know there was nothing I could have done,” Ms Pearce continued.
“My head was all over the place at the start of the case, I thought winning it might have brought Dan back, but nothing will.”
A spokesman for the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust said: “We have the greatest sympathy for the family’s loss and we acknowledge how devastating it was for them to lose a child.
“The decision to make an out of court payment was made as we did not feel it was in the family’s interest to proceed with a lengthy legal process that would also divert funds from patient care.
“The family and the Trust mutually agreed this settlement and no admissions of fault were made in the case.’”