The family of Shropshire teenager Charlotte Hartey, who died after her tonsillitis was diagnosed as swine flu, has launched an online campaign calling for over-the-phone diagnosis to be axed.

The campaign has been set up on the 16-year-old’s memorial page on Facebook.

Her family is urging friends who use Facebook to sign up to their protest against the use of call centres and calls to GPs to diagnosis potential swine flu cases.

They plan to present the petition to Downing Street to support their claims the system of over-the-phone swine flu diagnosis failed Charlotte and could lead to more deaths.

The teenager, of Quinta, Weston Rhyn, near Oswestry, died on July 31 at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. A post-mortem found she died from natural causes.

She was initially diagnosed with swine flu over the phone by a GP and treated for the virus. Her family believes her tonsillitis diagnosis was made too late because of the over-the-phone swine flu diagnosis.

Shropshire County Primary Care Trust is reviewing Charlotte’s care.

Launching the campaign on the RIP Charlotte site, her family said: “It has now been proven by the post-mortem that she never had swine flu. We are concerned that many more similar cas- es will happen in the autumn of 2009. We are therefore asking for your help.

“If you can, respond to this protest against call centres by leaving a message of support upon the wall.

“This will allow us to use the social network that we all belong to to get this message to every politician and so we can ultimately deliver it to Number 10 Downing Street and to get Gordon Brown to acknowledge the system has failed Charlotte.”

Charlotte’s father Karl today said: “We have got more than 1,000 people on the RIP Charlotte site and we are asking them and their friends to sign up to the petition. The more people who sign the petition the better. We want to be able to present this petition to Downing Street.”

Charlotte’s funeral is tomorrow at noon at St John’s Church in Weston Rhyn.

By Iain St John