The family of a little boy who died after he was sent home from A&Ehave said the five year old has already saved “hundreds and hundreds of children’s lives.”

Yusuf Mahmud Nazir died at Sheffield Children's Hospital in November 2022, eight days after he was seen at Rotherham Hospital and sent home with antibiotics. Yusuf's family met Health Secretary Wes Streetingin London today to discuss the family’s call for Yusuf’s Law.

The family wants national guidance to take into account parents’ intuition that “something feels very wrong” about their child, after they were ignored. They also discussed the report intoYusuf’s care, which was released in July and were promised by the Health Secretary, the recommendations would ‘not gather dust’.

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Speaking to The Mirror after the meeting in London, Yusuf's uncle, Zaheer Ahmed, 42, said: “Yusuf’s legend is already saving lives”. He said they were happy the Government was taking their calls for action "very, very seriously".

"It's important that this is taken very seriously and these concerns are addressed nationally," he said. And he told how they had discussed how Yusuf was already saving others from the same plight.

“Maybe his life was shortened to save hundreds and hundreds of other children. We want to prevent any other child going through what Yusuf's been through. Within the local hospitals we can see that people are using Yusuf's name, to get the right care. His name is getting used quite a lot.

“Some of the trusts are also using Yusuf’s name in their training. His legend is saving people’s lives. Wes Streeting also made a comment on that and said ‘we are sure Yusuf has saved many many lives already'."

Talking about the family’s daily trauma, he said: “It's absolutely broken our hearts, it's destroyed our hearts. Thinking about what could have been done, what could have been easily preventable. If only we’d been listened to, if only it was acted on, if only we were taken seriously, then Yusuf would have been still with us”.

The family have told how they begged for antibiotics, were told an ambulance was ‘not a taxi’ and how other children were also sick and waiting in corridors. Mr Ahmed added: “There’s not a day goes by where we don't speak about Yusuf, where we're not sharing family photographs of Yusuf.

“Our other children, Yusuf's cousins, Yusuf's brothers, they're all struggling daily, asking ‘when's Yusuf coming back? He's been gone for a while, when's he back? He's not answering our face time. He’s got two brothers, one one is thirteen years old and one just turned eighteen. It's very, very difficult for them because they're asking ‘why has Yusuf been taken? Why did Yusuf die? Why did it have to be him?’ It’s left us with a lifetime of trauma.”

A lawyer for the family previously told a pre-inquest review hearing that the family believed there were "a number of significant systems failures" in Sheffield and Rotherham. The youngster's family have always said they were told "there are no beds and not enough doctors" in the emergency department at Rotherham, and that Yusuf should have been admitted and given intravenous antibiotics.

The report into his care published in July said in its conclusions: "Our primary finding is that the parental concerns, particularly the mother's instinct that her child was unwell, were repeatedly not addressed across services. A reliance on clinical metrics over caregiver insight caused distress for the family.

"This led to a lack of shared decision-making and there was limited evidence of collaborative discussions with Yusuf's family around clinical decisions, leading to a sense of exclusion and reduced trust in care plans."

Yusuf, who had asthma, was taken to a GP with a sore throat and feeling unwell on November 15 2022. He was prescribed antibiotics by an advanced nurse practitioner. Later that evening, his parents took him to Rotherham Hospital urgent and emergency care centre where he was seen in the early hours of the morning after a six-hour wait. He was discharged with a diagnosis of severe tonsillitis and an extended prescription of antibiotics.

Two days later Yusuf was given further antibiotics by his GP for a possible chest infection, but his family became so concerned they called an ambulance and insisted the paramedics take him to Sheffield Children's Hospital rather than Rotherham. Yusuf was admitted to the intensive care unit on November 21 but developed multi-organ failure and suffered several cardiac arrests which he did not survive. A full inquest into his death is due to start on April 13 next year.

Mr Ahmed, who was joined at the meeting by Yusuf's mother, Soniya Ahmed, and lawyer Anna Thwaites, said: "We believe that the inquest will come out with a lot more truth about what happened to Yusuf. We wanted to make sure that parents' voices are heard, it's very important that parents get their voices heard."

Yusuf’s mum spoke at a press conference earlier this year. Soniya Ahmed, told of being haunted by her son pleading ‘mummy I can’t breathe’. The mum said her "happy little boy" had been failed "catastrophically".

"For the medical staff there are lessons to be learnt from this tragedy, but for us, our life, Yusuf has been taken away from us in the most horrific way," she said. “My son went into hospital with tonsillitis and he never returned home. My son was left to die right beside me. He was crying in pain. Yet received no pain relief.

“...The report concludes that 13 missed opportunities to escalate Yusuf’s care. All while I was trusting the NHS to protect him. They failed him catastrophically. “