UK court to sentence 85-year-old Nigerian-born doctor for killing woman during procedure

The Manchester Crown Court will sentence Isyaka Mamman, an 85-year-old Nigerian-born doctor, for gross negligent manslaughter of a patient at the Royal Oldham Hospital in the United Kingdom. 

According to the Manchester Evening News, Mamman attempted a “dangerous” procedure of taking a bone marrow sample from the woman’s sternum in September 2018, despite objections from Shahida Parveen, the patient, and her husband, after failing to obtain a sample from her hip in his first attempt. 
He was said to have inserted the biopsy needle but ‘completely missed’ the sternum, resulting in a fatal puncture wound to the pericardium, which surrounds the heart. 

The mother of three was said to have lost consciousness immediately, and her husband ran out of the room screaming, “He killed her!  I told him to stop three times and he did not listen. He killed her.” She was pronounced dead later that day.

Mamman is said to have been born in Okene, Kogi State, and to have graduated from medical school in Nigeria in 1965. He has, however, been working in the United Kingdom since 1991. This will not be his first brush with controversy. Mamman was said to have performed the same procedure three years prior on a 64-year-old man who had a cardiac arrest the same day.

Despite his survival, he is now permanently disabled and has mobility issues. Furthermore, the court heard that his “true age” is a point of contention because his birthplace in Nigeria lacks a birth registration system. During his medical training, Mamman was said to have given a date of birth of September 16, 1936, which meant that he was 21 years old when he began his medical training and 81 at the time of the fatal hospital incident.