NHS Tayside had 10 days to stop Eljamel fleeing but did nothing

NHS Tayside had 10 days to prevent neurosurgeon Sam Eljamel from walking away free from sanction but did nothing, it has been revealed.

Instead of objecting to Eljamel voluntarily removing himself from the General Medical Council register and preventing a full investigation and censure, senior health executives appear to have sat on their hands.

The Sunday Post reports more details of the way Eljamel removed himself from the GMC regulator, avoiding an investigation.

NHS Tayside’s failure to object to the voluntary removal is unexplained but the health board says it raised the issue previously in a review of its handling.

The case is now subject to a public inquiry which recently revealed its efforts to track down the neurosurgeon in his native Libya.

‘Reports lay bare NHS Tayside culpability’

Eljamel retired early in December 2014 after being suspended over the growing scandal. The health board has now accepted patients were being injured from as far back as 2012. It received the first complaint about the surgeon in 2011.

Kinross campaigner Jules Rose, 57, who says hundreds of lives have been destroyed by the surgeon, said: “For the first time, these reports truly lay bare the disgraceful extent of NHS Tayside’s culpability in this scandal.

“The most senior officials had 10 whole days to act, instead they did nothing.”

Ms Rose believes there may have been time to call in the police and potentially prevent the surgeon from fleeing to Libya – where he continues to operate – if NHS Tayside had taken immediate action.

“As far as I’m concerned, the officials who did nothing because it suited them for Eljamel to disappear to the other side of the world before their own culpability could be exposed, have the blood of overseas victims on their hands,” she added.

The government reports also show how NHS Tayside allowed Eljamel to be involved in his own “incident reviews”, compromising the independence.

We previously revealed the lack of oversight of the surgeon even after officials became aware of the potential scandal.

Supervision arrangements put in place amounted to a senior colleague accompanying the doctor on ward rounds each week. He carried out over 100 operations under the lacklustre supervision regime.

NHS Tayside ‘failed to address risk to patients’

One of the reports says the supervision of Eljamel’s spinal surgery cases was “not effectively implemented” and failed to “address the risks to all of his patients”.

Investigators were also scathing of the clinical governance at the health board, describing it as “not sufficiently robust”.

Eljamel is said to have wielded so much power over the careers and training opportunities of junior doctors that they were terrified to speak up against him.

Meanwhile, medical experts called in by the Scottish government showed Eljamel “cut corners” and “did not act with the honesty and integrity required by the General Medical Council”.

They found Eljamel’s “pre-operative assessment, patient counselling and consent was not of a standard they would have expected”.

In some cases, Eljamel’s patient care was “woefully substandard” and they found this was “one of the main reasons of his continued difficulties and complaints”.

Surgeon continued to see patients unsupervised after complaints

Overall, NHS Tayside’s poor handling meant Eljamel was allowed to continue seeing patients despite bosses being aware of the allegations of serious harm.

This included Ms Rose, who was left facing further surgery after Eljamel removed a tear gland rather than a tumour.

And despite knowing about other complaints against Eljamel, The Courier previously revealed how NHS Tayside failed to deal with the Kinross woman’s case as a complaint when she first contacted them.