Abungling Hungarian children’s doctor who failed six English tests after he misread a on a medication bottle and left a little boy fighting for life has been banned from treating patients.
Dr Gyorgy Rakoczy, now 70, failed tests in listening reading, writing and speaking after previously being reprimanded for wrongly injecting the four-year-old boy with a potentially lethal amount of carbolic acid during a bungled hospital operation.
Dr Rakoczy was reported to the General Medical Council over concerns about his command of the English language and was ordered to undergo retraining in 2019.
But the consultant paediatrician, who worked at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital in Manchester, failed to pass the requisite tests and instead blamed the exams themselves for being ‘ageist’ towards him.
At the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester, Rakoczy, was suspended from practising medicine in the UK for a year after a review hearing last month.
He says he no longer wants to work in British healthcare and has requested voluntary erasure from the GMC medical register.
Rakoczy had originally been disciplined after a botched operation at the hospital in May 2009 in which the unnamed boy was injected with 80 per cent phenol – also known as carbolic acid.
At the time Rakoczy – who was said to have a ‘limited command’ of the English language – was meant to use a five per cent concentration of the substance but mis-read the label.
The boy had been admitted for examination under general anaesthetic after his parents suspected he had a haemorrhoid – which Dr Rakoczy treated.
But he was left with ‘catastrophic’ internal injuries and needing a colostomy bag after Dr Rakoczy injected the child with 16 times the correct dose of carbolic acid and four times a potentially lethal dose.
The highly-corrosive liquid burned away parts of the boy’s body leaving him with a hole down to the bone at the base of his spine.
He has since required over 30 corrective operations, including the removal of a section of bowel and his parents – both healthcare professionals – said their son found it difficult going to the park and attending birthday parties.
Rakoczy was allowed to carry on working at the hospital following the operation but was suspended for three months in 2012 for serious misconduct.
