Coroner alerts health secretary to another case where second opinion could have prevented child’s death

The senior coroner who presided over Martha Mills’s inquest1 has alerted the health and social care secretary for England, Steve Barclay, to another case where a child died a preventable death after doctors ignored a mother’s warnings that the child was deteriorating.2Mary Hassell, senior coroner for inner north London, told Barclay in a report on prevention of future deaths that she believed he needed to know the circumstances of Riya Hirani’s death before deciding on introducing Martha’s rule, the right for parents to seek an urgent second opinion.Hassell is also sending a report to the medical director of Northwick Park Hospital, where Riya’s mother took her with an illness that seemed to her “qualitatively very different from any other that Riya had suffered in her nine years,” the coroner wrote in her report to Barclay. “Riya’s mum was convinced that Riya was extremely ill, she articulated clearly and at every…
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