“At the time of her death, Shanté was not receiving specialist care for her allergies”

The coroner’s concerns

1. At the time of her death, Shanté was not receiving specialist care for her allergies. However, her general practitioners (GPs) failed to appreciate this. They assumed that she was being treated for her allergies at the transitional asthma clinic to which she had been referred following her paediatric discharge. This was an incorrect assumption. 3 The GPs had not identified Shanté (who had a high BMI and was severely allergic) as being at particularly high risk from her allergies and asthma, and had no awareness that they were the sole providers of Shanté’s allergy care. 2. Shanté’s GPs knew that she should carry two adrenaline auto injector (AAI) pens at all times, and they may have mentioned this to her, but they failed to record this and they did not emphasise it to her. They failed to emphasise to Shanté and her family that the reason for carrying two pens is primarily because in the event of severe acute anaphylaxis, the very strong likelihood is that both pens will need to be administered, one five minutes after the other, to keep the patient alive until the arrival of an emergency ambulance. The GPs did not explore with Shanté the reason for her erratic requests for a pen. They did not explore with her where she kept her pens. They did not test her understanding of medical advice. 3. The Emerade AAI accompanying leaflet does include the advice that two pens should be carried at all times, but the advice is not re-iterated on the outside of the box. Consideration will need to be given to whether this is the appropriate advice in all cases, but it seems worthwhile to review the issue as a whole. (I assume the same is true of the EpiPen and the JEXT, but I heard no evidence about these at inquest.) 4. The Emerade AAI is sold singly. It could be sold in boxes of two as the norm and only singly in the alternative. 5. When Shanté’s AAI was changed from an EpiPen to an Emerade, her GPs failed to reconsider the prescription and to increase her dose from 300mgs to 500mcgs. 6. Following the scriptswitch, the GPs failed to ask Shanté to come in to the surgery for training in use of the Emerade. This would also have presented an ideal opportunity to explore Shanté’s understanding of the use of her pens and to ensure that she understood she needed to carry two at all times. 7. The GPs relied upon the advice given by Enfield Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) that the scriptswitch was simply the replacement of one branded product with another branded product of the same drug/device. This gave false reassurance. The CCG joint formulary committee introduced a new drug for GPs, but then gave the wrong advice to accompany this. 4 8. The CCG failed to draw prescribers’ attention to the need, following scriptswitch from EpiPen to Emerade, to reconsider the dose and to prescribe the higher dose of 500mcgs for patients at higher risk (which would have included Shanté). 9. The CCG failed to inform prescribers that the Emerade pen requires different training to the EpiPen because different AAIs do not operate in the same way. In fact, the CCG gave the opposite advice. 10. I did not hear evidence that there is any NICE (National Institute for Health & Care Excellence) guidance on the point. It seems that the whole area would benefit from NICE review. 11. It would also benefit from review by NHS England, particularly in terms of the guidance given to CCGs and regarding consideration of incentives (CQUIN indicators etc.) to educate and train in the management of allergies. 12. The Emerade AAI (and I assume the EpiPen and JEXT) leaflet does not specifically advise that training from a healthcare professional is needed in how to use this particular AAI as opposed to any other. 13. I heard that the gold standard of training for use of any AAI is to give the patient the relevant pen (whichever that patient is prescribed) containing a placebo rather than adrenaline and, following appropriate instruction, ask the patient actually to administer a dose. I heard at inquest that the incidence of this standard of training (in any setting) is rare. That may be for good reasons, but it seems that revisiting best practice training at a national level would be helpful. 14. When Shanté became ill following the ingestion of nuts, her mother rang NHS 111 and got through to the London Central & West (LCW) service. However, the call handler incorrectly recorded Shanté’s location: he failed to untick a box and so her grandmother’s address was recorded as her location, rather than her mother’s address where she was staying at the time. In an example of good practice, this error was recognised by the clinician who later took over the call. However, what nobody at LCW realised was that the Adastra computer system would not then update in real time for any screens save that of the particular clinician inputting the information. 5 The staff at LCW have since been made aware of this and have been trained to walk over and look at the primary screen to check the address, but it is not clear to me that there is now a national understanding of that element of the system. 15. During the course of the 111 call, a number of errors were made. These were the errors of LCW individuals. When LCW audited the call in the first instance, the audit identified the problem with the address, but failed to recognise how badly the call had gone in other ways. Without effective audit and recognition of failings, it is difficult to see how there can be effective improvement. 16. The individuals making these errors were working within the context of NHS Digital’s categorisation of anaphylaxis as needing a category 2 ambulance rather than a category 1 ambulance, on the Adastra computer system that supports the LCW 111 service. This was the wrong categorisation and not the categorisation that the call would have received if 999 had been called and the London Ambulance Service contacted in the first instance. Acute anaphylaxis is immed

An extract. Read the full report, including the circumstances of the death, on the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website.

Source

judiciary.uk, Prevention of Future Deaths reports, 2020-0124

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8 Oct 2026

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Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, judiciary.uk. Open Government Licence v3.0