A surgeon sacked after accidentally setting a patient on fire during an operation has been awarded £65,000.

The patient went up in a ‘flash of lightning’ while under the knife for breast surgery when Obi Iwuchukwu, 57, was handed an alcohol-based antiseptic instead of a water-based solution.

A tribunal was told: ‘He then used a diathermy pen which targets electrically induced heat to stop the wound from bleeding. It ignited the alcohol preparation, and the patient suffered a major burn.

‘It was described in the subsequent investigation as though a flash of lightning had entered the theatre..

The August 2013 incident was so traumatic that everyone involved received counselling.

Initially the hospital ruled that a ‘system error’ was to blame, but after a series of complaints were made against him, a hearing was held nearly two years later in March 2015.

The Royal College of Surgeons raised concerns about his ability but an employment panel was highly critical that he was sacked.

Instead, they found that the hospital should have come up with a plan for him to return from a suspension to do some clinical work.

Mr Iwuchukwu felt had been unfairly sacked so sued South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Trust for £5million. He was awarded £63,504.

The tribunal panel heard that in another incident he clashed with a German co-worker who told him ‘we are not operating out of a hut in Congo’.

Mr Iwuchukw, who moved to Sunderland from Nigeria in 2007, replied that the UK is ‘not like Nazi Germany’.

He is now in Cornwall earning £100,000 a year working for the NHS on supervised operations.

Employment judge Andrew Buchanan ruled that the trust’s failure to investigate grievances he raised in May and October 2014 amounted to racial discrimination and harassment.

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