A DOCTOR who worked at a Southampton hospital has been struck off after a series of unhygienic ‘home circumcisions’ on babies.

NHS paediatrician Dr Muhamad Siddiqui ran an unregistered mobile circumcision service outside of his day job which left children “writhing in agony”, a fitness to practice panel heard.

An investigation was launched in late 2013 around four youngsters who had circumcisions at their homes in Southampton, Bath, Birmingham and Reading for religious or cultural reasons, known only as Patients A to D.

The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) hearing heard how one child suffered an adverse reaction to a local anaesthetic and had a seizure – but the 49-year-old doctor did not realise and instead asked the boy’s father to wrap him in a blanket because he thought he was cold.

Seizures The baby was then taken to hospital where he suffered a further two seizures.

The 69 charges proved against him included performing the operations without washing his hands, using baby wipes and paper towels to clean patients’ pubic areas and not using antiseptic agents.

The allegations were made over a 17-month period between June 2012 and November 2013, during which Dr Siddiqui had worked as a clinical fellow in paediatric surgery at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

He was suspended when the investigation started but carried on performing home procedures using a loophole in the law. After a three-week hearing, panel chairman John Donnelly said Dr Siddiqui showed a “reckless disregard of good medical practice and patient safety”.

He said: “In the case of Patient C, Siddiqui carried on with a circumcision even though the indications were that the local anaesthetic had not worked, causing pain and distress.

“He seemed completely indifferent to the fact he had caused pain to this baby and actually said that when babies were already crying he established the effectiveness of the local anaesthetic by beginning the procedure and seeing the reaction.”

Mr Donnelly added: “Siddiqui said he is an experienced, hospital-based paediatric surgeon, yet he made a number of failures in basic hygiene in preparing babies for the circumcision and in preparing himself to perform them.

“Taken together they amounted to serious failures that must have increased the risk of infection to the very young children upon whom he was operating.

“Given his experience he must have known that the level of hygiene he was applying fell far below the standard expected of a medical practitioner carrying out a surgical procedure in the home and was wrong.”

Dr Siddiqui, who has resigned from the NHS, had also not registered his mobile service with the Care Quality Commission, which must approve doctors for home circumcisions.