Isyaka Mamman, a doctor of Nigerian descent, was given a three-year prison term by a Manchester Crown Court for killing a patient during a botched procedure.
On Tuesday, it was revealed in court that Mamman had lied about his age in order to delay his retirement. The 85-year-old, who had shaved 11 years off his real age in order to continue working, used the wrong needle and inserted it in the wrong place in 2018, piercing the sac that held Shahida Parveen’s heart. The patient then died from internal bleeding.
Following Mrs. Parveen’s death at Royal Oldham Hospital, Mamman was found guilty of manslaughter.
Mamman, who was 79 at the time, underwent a similar procedure in 2015. Margaret Helliwell, his patient, was in excruciating pain after he shoved his knee into her back to force a needle into her hip with such force that the device bent.
Mrs Helliwell complained and says a consultant told her that Mamman should retire and would no longer be performing such biopsies. But that did not happen.
Testifying in court, Helliwell, 81, said: “He was pummelling away so hard that the needle bent. I was screaming in pain, I was being sick and felt dizzy.
“I feel so sorry for the lady’s family. I am also angry that she went in for the same procedure as I did and she died. He shouldn’t have been allowed to continue practising because he had been caught lying.”
She said that when she read about Mrs Parveen’s death, ‘I just thought, “That could have been me”.
The court heard that in 2015 also Mamman condemned a man to permanent disability following a bone marrow biopsy done wrongly.
Mamman arrived in Britain in 1965 and began working as a haematologist.
But 20 years ago, managers at Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent noticed a discrepancy. Mamman, who had said he was born in 1936, was using a Nigerian passport that showed a birth year of 1941.
In about 2001, Mamman claimed he was born in 1947 when it was time for naturalisation as a British citizen.