Autistic boy died after Norfolk hospital staff didn't spot sepsis in time, inquest finds

• The coroner concluded that Mattheus Vieira's death was contributed to by neglect, as Natalie Gray reports for ITV News Anglia

An autistic boy died of sepsis after hospital staff failed to spot the condition in time, an inquest found.

Mattheus Vieira, 11, was described by NHS staff as “uncooperative” and “very difficult to examine” when he was brought into hospital on the evening of 11 April 2022 with a urinary tract infection.

He did not like to be touched, nor be surrounded by lots of strangers and was said to sit in his pram looking at his tablet computer.

He died the next afternoon as his condition worsened and as staff were preparing to transfer him to a paediatric intensive care unit in Cambridge.

The boy, from Gaywood in Norfolk, would still be alive if his sepsis had been spotted earlier, a coroner said.

And there were "red flags", including Mattheus' breathing rate, heart rate, low levels of oxygen in his blood and ashen appearance, an investigation by Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn found.

Mattheus' father Vitor, who works as a machine operator at the hospital where his only child died, said: “Mattheus was our life and incredibly loved and our world has fallen apart without him in it.”

He said afterwards that Mattheus “deserved the same standard of care as any other little boy but was denied this due to being autistic”.

“We want him to now have a voice, and for other autistic patients to be seen and to not needlessly lose their lives,” he said.

Coroner Yvonne Blake, who oversaw the inquest in Norwich, said his death "was contributed to by neglect".

She said the “seriousness of [Mattheus's] condition wasn’t apparent to the staff who saw him”.

She continued: “It’s made difficult by children with Mattheus’s kind of condition where he can’t tell people how he feels.

“He doesn’t like people touching him so you get the difficulties, but you can’t just not take readings on people because it’s difficult.”

But she said: “He wasn’t writhing about – he was sitting quietly playing [on his tablet computer] and people might have been reassured by that.”

Mattheus was said to have communication issues. He could use single words, such as saying the word for “shoe” in Portuguese when he wanted to go out.

His diet largely consisted of crisps and he liked to watch the same cartoons at the same time of day, the hearing was told.

Lucy Mellor of JMW, the law firm representing Mattheus’s parents, said: “The disturbing lack of treatment for Mattheus leaves no doubt in my mind that a finding of neglect was the only reasonable outcome from today’s hearing.

“What happened to Mattheus is shocking to all, but particularly for families with autistic children, and this has to be a watershed moment to ensure this can never happen again.”

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