UK bans medic over abuse of Kenyans
What you need to know:
- The country’s Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service has found Prof Philipp Bonhoeffer, formerly head of cardiology at the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London, guilty of what it says is gross misconduct.
- The cardiologist, who was suspended from the Great Ormond Street Hospital in 2010 following the allegations, was a regular traveller to Kenya between 1993 and 2008 to do charitable medical work.
- He worked through Chain of Hope, a UK charity, where he was chairman of its medical operations. For many years, they organised missions to Kenya to attend to children with heart problems.
A world-renowned heart specialist has been struck off the medical register in the UK after he was found guilty of sexually molesting Kenyan boys.
The country’s Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service has found Prof Philipp Bonhoeffer, formerly head of cardiology at the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London, guilty of what it says is gross misconduct.
The cardiologist, who was suspended from the Great Ormond Street Hospital in 2010 following the allegations, was a regular traveller to Kenya between 1993 and 2008 to do charitable medical work. (READ: UK doctor ‘abused Kenyan boys’)
He worked through Chain of Hope, a UK charity, where he was chairman of its medical operations. For many years, they organised missions to Kenya to attend to children with heart problems.
According to a report in The Independent newspaper of the UK, the panel found that in 1995, during an overnight stay at a camp in Marsabit, he inappropriately touched a 13-year-old boy.
The heart expert is reported to have promised the boy support through high school. In 1998, the report says, Prof Bonhoeffer had written to the boy, who was then 16, telling of his love and started paying his school fees. “He continued to provide him with money and gifts until 2008,” says the report.
The panel was also told that in August 2008, Prof Bonhoeffer had kissed a boy – aged 10 or 11 – who was a younger brother of one of his patients.
The panel is also said to have discovered that the cardiologist was in the habit of making arrangements for other Kenyan boys to stay with him in a flat at the Mater Hospital in Nairobi.
A financial statement by Chain of Hope says it has been organising missions to Mater Hospital since 2005 to treat children suffering from complex congenital and rheumatic heart conditions.
Talking to the UK paper soon after the verdict, about a week ago, the country’s chief executive of the General Medical Council, Mr Niall Dickson, promised to inform every medical regulatory authority in the world of the decision.
