Inquiry Team

Monye Anyadike-Danes BL - Counsel to the Inquiry

Monye Anyadike-Danes QC is Senior Counsel to the Inquiry. She was appointed Queens Counsel in June 2007. She was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1980 and has been in practise since then. She has also worked in the Caribbean and was called to the Bar of St Vincent and the Grenadines in 1991.

Ms Anyadike-Danes came to Northern Ireland in 1997 and became a member of the Bar here where she has practiced for the past 7 years. In 2001, she was called to the Bar of the Republic of Ireland. Her portfolio in Northern Ireland includes Family Law and Human Rights cases particularly in Children’s Orders for the Guardian Ad Litem.

Jill Comerton BL- Junior Counsel to the Inquiry

Jill Comerton is Junior Counsel to the Inquiry.

Jill Comerton BL was called to the Bar in 1993. Her practice extends to a wide range of areas including Commercial Law, Chancery, Judicial Review and Planning. From 1994 Ms. Comerton prosecuted for approximately 10 years. She was appointed to the Government Civil Panel in 2004. Ms. Comerton has also previously tutored on occasions at the Institute of Professional Legal Studies, Belfast.

Solicitor to the Inquiry

Anne Dillon - Solicitor to the Inquiry

Advisors to the Inquiry

John O’Hara QC has appointed 4 advisors to the Inquiry. Details are as follows:

Paediatric Advisor

Dr Harvey Marcovitch MA, MB BChir, FRCP, FRCPCH, DCH DObstRCOG

Harvey Marcovitch was a full time NHS consultant paediatrician from 1977 to 2001, latterly in Oxfordshire where he was also honorary senior clinical lecturer at the University of Oxford. From 1994 to 2002 he was editor of Europe’s leading paediatric scientific journal, Archives of Disease in Childhood and is now associate editor of the British Medical Journal. He sits on Fitness to Practise Panels of the General Medical Council, which he also chairs from time to time.

From 1985 to date he has acted as an expert witness for claimants and defendants in clinical negligence cases and is a member of the Expert Witness Institute. He is adviser on external relations for the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health.

NHS Manager Advisor

Ms Mary Whitty BA (Hons)

Until 2002 Mary Whitty was the Chief Executive of Brent and Harrow Health Authority in North West London. She joined the National Health Service as a management trainee in 1973 and retired in 2002, having had extensive experience of managing hospital, community and family practitioner health services in London.

From 2002 until 2004 she was a member of the Department of Health Inquiry into the handling by the NHS of allegations about the conduct of Clifford Ayling, who practised as a hospital doctor and GP in Kent. Since 2002 she has also worked part-time for the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority and the Health Protection Agency.

Nursing Advisor

Ms Carol Williams MSc BA (Hons), RGN, RSCN

Carol Williams is a consultant nurse in Paediatric Intensive Care in Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London. She has provided expert witness evidence in the Brompton & Harefield Hospitals and Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiries.

As Chair of the Royal College of Nursing and Paediatric & Neonatal Intensive Care Forum she provided written and verbal evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee on Child Health and contributed to the development of the National Service Framework for Paediatric Intensive Care Co-ordinating Group and for a Department of Health Team benchmarking national paediatric intensive care standards.

Paediatric Anaesthetist

Dr Peter Booker, MB, BS, FRCA, MD

Peter Booker was appointed as a consultant paediatric anaesthetist in January 1982 at the Royal Liverpool Children’s Hospital (Alder Hey). He was a senior lecturer in paediatric anaesthesia at the University of Liverpool from 1992 - 2005. He is currently a full time NHS consultant.

He has been an examiner for the Royal College of Anaesthetists since 1994. He has published extensively and is co-editor of the textbook “Paediatric Cardiac Anaesthesia”. He has an interest in postgraduate education and has organised, for the last ten years, a popular revision course for trainee anaesthetists about to take their final specialist examination.

Peer Reviewers

Desmond Bohn MB BCh FFARCS, MRCP, FRCPC

Professor, Departments of Anaesthesia & Paediatrics, University of Toronto
Chief, Department of Critical Care Medicine, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto

Dr. Bohn was born in England and is a medical graduate of University College Dublin who undertook his postgraduate training in anaesthesia in Bristol between 1971 and 1975. He joined the staff of the critical care unit at The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto in 1980. In 2001, Dr. Bohn was appointed Professor and Chief of the Department of Critical Care Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children.

His research interests are outcomes based research in children with multi organ failure, and he is published in the areas of acute respiratory failure (ECMO high frequency ventilation and nitric oxide), brain injury, congenital diaphragmatic hernia. He has authored peer reviewed publications and book chapters on fluid therapy and acute hyponatraemia. He is also a member of the Ontario Coroner’s Paediatric Death Review Committee which provides peer review for the investigation of sudden and unexpected deaths in children.

Internal Medicine/Nephrology Advisor

Allen I. Arieff, BS, MS, MD, FACP

Allen Arieff has been a Professor of Medicine at the University of California Medical School at San Francisco for over 25 years. He has done extensive research on the effects of fluid and electrolyte disorders on the brain. This has resulted in 66 invited lectures at International meetings, with over 180 critically reviewed publications, including 10 textbooks on fluid, electrolyte and acid-base disorders and a dozen citation classics.

He has been a consultant to the Food &Drug Administration (USA), the National institutes of Health (USA), Office of the Surgeon General (Canada), Environmental Protection Agency (Norway), Attorney General and Public Defenders Offices (California, USA) and multiple industrial and pharmaceutical companies.

He has served as an expert witness for multiple state courts (USA) in homicide cases, and to both the State and Federal Court System (USA) in many cases of medical malpractice. He has been on the editorial board or review board for over 25 critically reviewed publications. He has over 10 publications in the paediatric literature about fluid & electrolyte disorders and has described two new syndromes leading to brain damage in children.

MS Sharon Kinney MN, Paed ICU Cert.., Cardiothoracic Cert.

Sharon Kinney has worked for many years in paediatric and/or critical care areas in New Zealand, England and Australia. She was a clinical educator and co-ordinator of Paediatric Intensive Care Nursing Course at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne from 1988-1997.

From 1997-2004 she was a lecturer at the University of Melbourne co-ordinating the postgraduate nursing programme in paediatric critical care. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and her research examines a system of care to improve the management of seriously ill children on the wards. She also holds a part-time position in the Intensive Care Unit and Clinical Quality and Safety Unit at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.