The surgeon at the centre of the County Durham and Darlington breast cancer scandal is on sick leave but remains employed and on full pay, an NHS trust boss has confirmed.
Amir Bhatti was clinical lead of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust’s breast cancer surgery service when serious care failings emerged.
Mr Bhatti, who joined the Trust in 2005, was barred from breast cancer surgery in February 2025 before the restrictions were widened later that year to stop him carrying out any clinical work.
Trust chief executive Steve Russell confirmed to The Northern Echo that Mr Bhatti was now off on sick while an investigation into him continues.
Former breast cancer surgery lead, Amir Bhatti (Image: SUBMIT)
He said: “Mr Bhatti is on sick leave, and the investigation into him remains ongoing. It will be concluded as soon as possible.
“There’s one or two more people that investigators want to talk to.”
Mr Russell said he hoped Mr Bhatti would co-operate, pointing to the surgeon’s earlier statement to the BBC that he remained “committed to the ongoing trust investigation”.
Despite the restrictions, Mr Bhatti remains employed on his full salary.
Mr Russell previously accepted it would “feel unjust” to women harmed by the service’s failings but said the trust had to keep paying him while employment procedures continued.
He said the trust extended the restrictions to protect patients and stressed that Mr Bhatti cannot work clinically or enter areas where breast-service patients are treated.
Chief executive of the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, Steve Russell (Image: Chris Booth)
Mr Bhatti previously asked the High Court to lift the restrictions and stop the trust reimposing them. The trust defended the case, and the court kept the restrictions in place.
The investigation comes amid an expanding review into breast cancer treatment at CDDFT.
An independent review led by governance expert Mary Aubrey identified a decade of missed warnings, ignored red flags and “systemic failures”, initially finding that 51 women had been harmed.
The trust has since found that hundreds of patients were harmed, including 20 women who underwent unnecessary mastectomies.
Durham Police is separately investigating whether criminal offences were committed.
The review will then examine cases from 2022 and work backwards year by year to 2015, potentially covering around 4,500 women.
Documents suggest the review could take five years, meaning some women treated in 2015 may wait until 2031 for their cases to be examined.
University Hospital of North Durham in Durham City. (Image: Chris Booth)
Nadeen Lister, who runs the 150-strong Pink Justice Network with Amelia Green, said she became emotional on hearing the possible scale of the review.
Mrs Lister, who was twice reassured about a breast lump in 2017 before being diagnosed with cancer, said the review should go back to 2005, when Mr Bhatti joined the trust.
She said: “When I found out that it could be 4,500 women, I did get quite emotional, and I did cry, because the scale of this scandal is never-ending.”
Mr Russell said no one else at the trust is currently under investigation as part of the review, although women’s concerns are still being assessed.
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Between 2022 and 2024, 8,000 of the 13,500 patients referred for breast care were seen at outsourced clinics paid for on a per-appointment basis through companies including Durham Surgical Services, where Mr Bhatti was a director.
The trust has since ended the arrangements, with Mr Russell, who only became trust chief exec in September 2025, admitting that the necessary safeguards, governance and oversight were not previously all in place.
Mr Bhatti has said that serving patients’ best interests is of “paramount importance” and that lessons must be learned when things go wrong.