Victim reveals how she was left with flesh-eating disease after GP did not see her face-to-face then fled to India
A woman who had most of her stomach removed after a negligent GP failed to see her in person has spoken of her ‘fury’ when she later discovered the doctor had fled to India.
Oriana McDonald noticed a lump in her stomach and discovered she had a temperature of 36.6 degrees, so she consulted her local GP, Dr. Nupur went to see Mittal.
The 57-year-old spent the entire ‘two-minute’ meeting with Dr on 6 July 2018. He described how Mittal stood at the sink in his room at the Waterfield Practice in Bracknell, Berkshire.
Oriana told the Daily Mail: ‘I would stay in the room for less than two minutes, less than two minutes. At the other end of the room, with his back to me, he was able to make a diagnosis by saying ‘antibiotics’ and ‘cellulitis’.
“I said, ‘You didn’t even touch me, you didn’t take my temperature,'” she recalled. ‘He wasn’t interested at all.’
Oriana said that Dr Mittal had to be supervised during the appointment because there were patients who had complained before but she had not.
Despite taking antibiotics, Oriana began to feel worse after three days and called the practice again to ask Dr. He spoke to Mittal on the phone.
Dr Nupur Mittal faces £128,000 medical negligence bill after failing to diagnose Oriana ‘systematically poorly’ when she called doctor for surgery
Her partner Ian Gale became increasingly worried and called an ambulance on July 11, 2018.
“I’ll give you another round of antibiotics, if it gets worse you may have to call the hospital,” he said. ‘He didn’t really care, he certainly didn’t care at all.’
Oriana reported that the rash on her abdomen had spread, she was sweating, and could not move. Her partner Ian Gale became increasingly worried and called an ambulance on July 11, 2018.
Mr Gale, a wheelchair user, said he was unable to go to hospital but spoke to a doctor who informed him that Oriana was facing ‘life-or-death surgery’.
Oriana was diagnosed with a very large abscess or cyst on her abdominal wall, with signs of sepsis.
Medics suspected necrotizing fasciitis, also known as ‘flesh-eating disease’, a rare and life-threatening infection that begins in the wound. He underwent radical surgery in which a large amount of tissue was removed from his stomach.
‘I have a scar that runs from left to right from my hip bone to my hip bone, it took over a year to heal completely,’ he said, adding that he was conscious of the scar most of the time, making it difficult to wear clothes.
Oriana, Dr. He explained that he only started thinking about suing Mittal for compensation two years after the incident.
‘I was just happy to be alive and coping and then I was talking to Ian and I said ‘Unless he gets shot I’m not happy’ because I didn’t want this to happen to anyone else.
Since late 2024, Dr Mittal has run the Ambala Health Clinic in Ambala, a city in northern India, which boasts ’20 years of international experience in the UK’.
‘We wanted to save someone else from what we went through, the next one might be dead.’
The couple instructed BLV Law lawyers and Dr. She filed a civil lawsuit against Mittal for medical negligence, but the doctor did not respond to any of their correspondence and did not attend the court.
They were awarded a total of £128,204.30, including damages, legal costs and interest, in Dr Mittal’s absence.
The court found him liable for medical negligence for failing to identify Oriana, which caused his injuries.
Dr. They only learned that Mittal had left the UK for India when they sought to secure the loan on his house in Reading and Dr. Mittal’s husband, who is also a general practitioner, also responded to the objection.
On learning that Dr Mittal had gone to India, Oriana said: ‘I felt some anger towards him.
‘If he had diagnosed this in the first place I would have had a two inch scar.’
Ian added: ‘He was just burying his head in the sand, hiding and running away from everything.
‘A doctor is doing their job, I know they’re very busy, they don’t always have time, but when they go to see a patient, they need to see that patient.’
Dr Mittal was working at the Waterfield Practice in Bracknell on 6 July 2018 and met NHS patient Ms McDonald face to face. McDonald found a lump in his stomach and told the doctor he had a temperature of 36.6°C.
Dr., who currently runs a practice in India. Mittal was contacted for comment and said he was objecting to the case filed against him.
Temporary restrictions had been placed on his practice by the General Medical Council since February 2016, but following an interim order tribunal (IOT) at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in June 2024, these restrictions were replaced by a temporary suspension, preventing him from practicing and treating patients.
At another IOT hearing on November 21 last year, the interim suspension was ordered to remain in place, subject to review.
A GMC spokesman said: ‘The GMC is committed to Dr. He is investigating Nupur Mittal. ‘While this is ongoing Dr Mittal has been temporarily suspended, meaning he is unable to treat patients.’
