A grieving husband has launched legal action against Croydon's NHS trust after his pregnant wife died following a "shocking" nine-hour delay in critical treatment.

Masood Khalid, 46, believes mother-of-two Fauzia Khan, 43, would have survived if doctors had acted quicker to administer drugs for an infection caused by a miscarriage.

Mrs Khan, of Oakfield Road, West Croydon, died of multiple organ failure triggered by sepsis after being admitted to A&E at Croydon University Hospital in November 2013. 

Her husband did not learn until last month, at an inquest into her death, that a "communication gap" meant doctors delayed giving Mrs Khan essential medication to treat the infection as she lay "screaming with pain" in intensive care.

She died just two months after another woman, Madhumita Mandal, 30, died of multiple organ failure caused by sepsis following delays in her treatment at the same emergency department.

Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said it had implemented "far-reaching changes" to way it treats pregnant women following Mrs Khan's death.

Mr Khalid has now instructed lawyers to file a lawsuit against the trust.

He said: "The treatment of my wife was so poor that I don't want it to happen to anyone else. That's why I am doing it.

"Remembering her in so much pain still haunts me every day.

"I believe my wife and her family, if the NHS trust takes steps to improve their services, would be happy. She cannot come back but at least some other lives can be saved."

Mrs Khan - who had a seven-year-old son, Umir, with her husband and a 13-year-old daughter, Zaahra, with a previous partner - was four months pregnant with her second daughter she went to hospital with a suspected urine infection.

She feared she was losing her baby, but the emergency department doctor who saw her on November 24 was not trained to carry out scans and advised her to return the next day.

Mrs Khan returned to casualty two days later with abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding and was told she had her suffered a septic miscarriage, in which the foetus becomes infected.

Medics in the hospital's intensive care unit prescribed the drug misoprostol to induce labour but despite Mrs Khan agreeing to the treatment at 5pm, she did not receive it until 2am the next day, by which time she was critically ill.

Her husband remained in the dark about the delay for nearly two years following her death.

Her husband said: "I thought they were doing everything but found out at the inquest they were busy and there was a communication gap and they just left my wife lying there screaming with pain, waiting for someone to come and help her."

Mrs Khan underwent a hysterotomy - an operation similar to a Caesarean section - later that morning but began bleeding heavily.

Surgeons then carried out a hysterectomy - the removal of her womb - in a bid to save her life, but she died at 7.10pm on November 27.

An inquest into her death at Croydon Coroner's Court on September 8 heard Mrs Khan did not receive misoprostol for nine hours because of a lack of communication between A&E doctors and those in intensive care.

The court heard the drug, which the on-call consultant that night said was essential for clearing the infection, would have increased her chances of survival, although coroner Adela Williams concluded she could not be certain it would have saved her life.

Mr Khalid, who married his wife in Pakistan in April 2007 and moved to Croydon the next year, said: "My first point was somebody should have operated on her straight away, but I was shocked in the inquest to hear they did not even do medical management until 2am, which was too late anyway. 

"Basically, in my opinion, they just chose to leave my wife to die there while they were busy looking after other patients. I'm not saying other patients are not important, but my wife was important was well."

Mr Khalid also believes his wife's could have been saved if doctors had conducted a scan of her unborn baby - later revealed by an autopsy to be a girl - when she first went to hospital four days before her death.

He said: "If anybody had bothered to check on Saturday evening, it would have been different, or on the Tuesday if they had operated straight away or had not delayed medical management, it might have been different. 

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Mrs Khan died at Croydon University Hospital in November 2013

He added: "I strongly believe the hospital is responsible for my wife's death. This was so shocking. I was not expecting this in this country at all.

"Whenever we pass the hospital now my children just point and say, 'This is the hospital where my mum died.'"

Paul Sankey, a clinical negligence specialist at the law firm Slater and Gordon, which is representing Mr Khalid, said: "We have serious concerns about the way Mrs Khan’s care was handled and will continue to pursue justice for Mr Khalid and his family."

Mr Khalid gave up his work as a distributor for a marketing company to care for his son and step-daughter, as well as three foster children the couple looked after, following her death.

He said: "It has been so very difficult, especially as you can imagine with small children who have to live without a mother.  And myself, living with a wife and the mother of my children, it is very difficult. Everything has changed.

"My wife was not only a very good wife and mother, but she looked after other people.

"A couple of doors away there are two elderly ladies who were friends to my wife's mum and have become very old and ill. My wife, for five or six years until her death, cooked food for them every day. She was that kind of person."

Dr Nnenna Osuji, medical director at Croydon Health Services, said: "This was a truly tragic event. Our hearts go out to the patient’s family and we have given them our unreserved apology and unqualified support.

 "Whilst the coroner found that Mrs Khan death may not have been avoided and that our treatment of her was appropriate, we are committed to making every change we can to reduce the chance of something like this ever happening again."  

"She added: We have made far-reaching changes to the way that our emergency department (ED) treats pregnant women who need to use our services and to ensure that they receive the highest quality care not only from our ED doctors but from gynaecological and obstetric specialists who are experts in caring for pregnant women." 

"We have started a campaign within the hospital to raise awareness of sepsis, our electronic patient records system now flags-up patients with signs of sepsis, and our doctors now carry pocket cards to help diagnose conditions such as sepsis more quickly."