Why he matters in this case
Prof. Khashu is one of two UK consultant neonatologists who sat on the Shoo Lee International Expert Panel (the other being Prof. Neena Modi). His professional specialisation — perinatal medicine combined with long-standing engagement with NHS patient-safety policy — makes him uniquely placed to read the Countess of Chester cluster as neonatologists working in the UK system actually read it. That is to say: not as an unusual individual event, but as a recognisable pattern of a struggling unit under strain, with the additional risk-factor that the system’s reflex when a cluster is identified is to look for a “bad apple” rather than to fix the system.
Professional background
- Professor of Perinatal Medicine, Bournemouth University.
- Consultant neonatologist at University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust — actively clinically practising during the period the Shoo Lee Panel reviewed.
- Author of peer-reviewed papers on neonatal outcomes, necrotising enterocolitis, and patient-safety systems.
- Long-standing public voice on NHS just-culture reform — the principle that patient-safety incidents should be analysed as systemic events, not scapegoat events, in order that safety actually improves.
- Member of the Shoo Lee International Expert Panel that reported in February 2025.
His contribution to the Panel report
Prof. Khashu’s contribution to the Panel’s case-by-case review brings two specific strands:
- Active UK clinical perspective. Because he is still consulting clinically, his read on each case is calibrated to what a modern UK NICU would consider routine versus anomalous. That calibration matters: the Crown’s causation expert had not worked in routine neonatal intensive care for over a decade.
- Systems perspective. His patient-safety scholarship frames the Countess of Chester evidence in the systems-failure category: when multiple independent factors combine (outbreak, staffing, infrastructure, acuity mismatch), adverse outcomes accumulate. Clusters in this setting are a known epidemiological signal, not a criminal signal.
On the just-culture dimension
Prof. Khashu’s broader public writing since 2023 has been about the cost to the NHS when individuals are blamed for systemic failures: the system does not fix itself, whistle blowers are deterred, and the real risks persist. He has not claimed the Letby case is definitively a systems case rather than a deliberate-harm case — that is for the CCRC and the courts. What he has said is: the Panel’s medical review found the evidence compatible with systems failure in every indicted case, and in that situation the criminal-justice and patient-safety systems need to be able to ask the systems question again.