A SERIOUSLY ill baby boy who was left without treatment for six hours at Heartlands Hospital died just one hour after he was finally seen by a paediatrician, an inquest was told.

Fourteen-month-old Elyas Nasserulddin Albana, from Tyseley, suffered from Bartter’s Syndrome, a kidney condition, which meant he had to be given large amounts of sodium and potassium though a tube.

He was so ill he had been issued with a special ‘passport letter’ which meant he should have been fast-tracked straight through to the paediatric ward every time he was taken to hospital.

Elyas’s father, Nasserulddin Musettold, had told the inquest his son had been vomiting for 36 hours and had diarrhoea when he dialled 999, and an ambulance took him to the A&E department at Heartlands Hospital, around 4.30pm on October 8, 2008.

Yesterday the inquest heard that when the tot reached the Paediatric Assessment Unit just after 7pm, Elyas was given a triage grading of three out of four, by Sister Sarah Bell-Scott, which meant he should have been seen within an hour by a doctor.

But the inquest heard how two senior doctors were called to the High Dependency Unit to help with another seriously ill patient, and they did not know of any other patients, including Elyas, who needed urgent care during that shift.

Sister Bell-Scott, who was informed through a colleague that Elyas had a ‘passport letter’, said he was passing a large amount of urine and had a very high pulse rate of 195, but was given paracetamol to settle his heart rate. She also said she failed to tell doctors about his condition because she thought the doctor “would become aware as they were writing up paracetamol.”

By the time Elyas saw Dr Iain Darwood, a paediatrician, at 10pm, he suffered a cardiac arrest and was officially declared dead at 11pm.

Another consultant paediatrician Dr Neil McCathie, who was on duty that day said he did not know a passport patient had been transferred.

He said: “If passport patients are clinically unwell with persistent diarrhoea and vomiting, they should have been seen as a matter of priority.”