Inquiry Team

Monye Anyadike-Danes QC - Senior 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.


Solicitor to the Inquiry

Anne Dillon

Advisors to the Inquiry

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

Dr. Harvey Marcovitch
MA(Cantab & Oxon), MB BChir, FRCP(Lond), FRCPCH (hon), DCH DObstRCOG
Area of expertise: Paediatrics

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 editor in chief of Clinical Risk, a bimonthly journal dealing with patient safety, medical law and clinical risks, published by the Royal Society of Medicine Press Ltd. He is also associate editor of the British Medical Journal. Since 2001 he has been an Associate of the General Medical Council and chairs many of its Fitness to Practice hearings.

He has been chairman of the Committee on Publication Ethics (an organization of some 6000 editors of learned journals worldwide) and was on the board of the UK Research Integrity Office, for whom he remains an adviser.

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 was awarded honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health in 2006, having previously held various offices since its foundation, including honorary editor and adviser on external relations.

Ms. Carol Williams
BA(Hons), MSc, RGN, RSCN
Area of expertise: Paediatric Intensive Care Nursing

Carol Williams is an independent healthcare consultant consultant who has recently worked in healthcare regulation. Between March 1985 and January 2006 she worked in Paediatric Critical Care at Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London. Her most recent post was Consultant Nurse in Paediatric Intensive Care, but she has managed Children’s Critical Care & worked as a lecturer on both undergraduate and masters nursing programmes. 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, Carol 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.

Grenville Kershaw
BA (Hons), FHSM, CCMI
Area of expertise: NHS Management

Gren Kershaw has worked in the UK National Health Service for over 36 years. He has held a number of senior managerial positions in different Health Organisations in England and Wales, covering acute, community and mental health services. For the last 16 years until December 2008, he was the Chief Executive of Conwy & Denbighshire NHS Trust in North Wales.

Gren Kershaw has a long standing interest in quality & safety in health care. He has been responsible forthe Welsh Risk Pool, which manages clinical negligence claims in Wales. He was a project board memberfor the introduction of the National Reporting and Learning System for the National Patient Safety Agency. More recently he led the successful “Safer Patients Initiative” in his own organisation and was a core team member of the "Patient Safety First" campaign in England. He continues to advise on leadership in the “1000 lives” campaign in Wales.

In addition to regular teaching on leadership, Gren Kershaw provides induction training on patient safety to new NHS Non-Executive Board Directors, through the Appointments Commission in England.

Dr Peter Booker
MB BS(Lond), FFARCS(Lond), MD (Liverpool)
Area of expertise: Paediatric Anaesthetist

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 retired from his NHS post at the end of August 2010.

He was an examiner for the Royal College of Anaesthetists from 1994 - 2005. He had a particular interest in paediatric cardiac anaesthesia and most of his research and publications reflected that interest. He was heavily involved in postgraduate education and organised, for many years, a revision course for trainee anaesthetists about to take their final specialist examination.

Ms. Mary Whitty
BA(Hons)
Area of expertise: Health Service Management

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 regarding 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.

Mary Whitty retired from the Inquiry through ill-health in 2010 and has been replaced by Grenville Kershaw whose details are above.

Peer Reviewers

Allen I. Arieff
BA (Michigan) BS (Illinois), MD (North Western), MD (North Western), FACP
Area of expertise: Internal Medicine/Nephrology

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.

Desmond Bohn
MB BCh (Dublin) FFARCS, MRCPC (UK), FRCPC LMCC
Area of expertise: Paediatric Anaesthesia and Paediatric Critical Care Medicine

Desmond Bohn is the chief of the Department of Critical Care Medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and Professor of Anaesthesia and Paediatrics at the University of Toronto.  He did his undergraduate medical training at University College Dublin graduating in 1969 and 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 where he has been in full time practice in paediatric critical care medicine. He has authored peer reviewed publications and book chapters on fluid therapy and acute hyponatraemia. He has also been a member of the Paediatric Death Review Committee of the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario since 1991.  This committee provides peer review for the investigation of deaths in children that are referred to the coroner’s office.

Dr Sharon Kinney
Cardiothoracic Cert., Paed ICU Cert., BN (La Trobe), MN (Deakin), PhD (UniMelb)
Area of expertise: Paediatric Intensive and Critical Care Nursing

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 coordinator of the 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 coordinating the postgraduate nursing programme in paediatric critical care. Between 2004 and 2009 her clinical and research work involved examining life threatening events of hospitalised children (including hyponatraemia) in order to better understand, and ultimately improve, the management of seriously ill children on the wards. She currently holds teaching and research positions with the Royal Children’s Hospital and the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include paediatric resuscitation, paediatric critical care nursing, and improving the safety and quality of care for hospitalised children.