GP is struck off for hepatitis outbreak

A doctor who was once jailed for performing illegal abortions was struck off the medical register for a second time yesterday after he admitted medical blunders that caused Britain's worst hepatitis B outbreak.

A doctor who was once jailed for performing illegal abortions was struck off the medical register for a second time yesterday after he admitted medical blunders that caused Britain's worst hepatitis B outbreak.

Dr Madhusudan Shivadikar appeared before the professional ethics committee of the General Medical Council over allegations that he infected 60 people with hepatitis B at his Finchley Alternative Medical Centre in north London.

Dr Shivadikar, 71, was removed from the register by the GMC for less than a year in 1979 after he served an 18-month prison sentence for illegally trying to carry out two abortions in the mid-1970s.

This time, the GMC struck Dr Shivadikar off after a hearing into nine separate offences, including failing to protect patients and staff from "serious communicable diseases," and allowing his unqualified daughter to draw blood and carry out injections.

The charges also accuse Dr Shivadikar of causing the 1998 virus outbreak through his use of an unconventional acupuncture treatment, autohaemotherapy, which involved injecting patients with their own blood mixed with a saline solution. Although the needles were sterilised, he allegedly used a communal syringe and reused the same saline bottle for numerous patients.

Dr Shivadikar admitted a number of medical blunders but denied that amounted to serious professional misconduct.