The father of Shropshire teenager Charlotte Hartey, who died following complications when her tonsillitis was diagnosed as swine flu, is to meet one of the region’s top health experts.

Karl Hartey is to have talks with Dr Rashmi Shukla, the regional director of public health in the West Midlands.

He says he has built up a worrying dossier of things that went wrong in his daughter’s diagnosis and care.

Charlotte, 16, of Weston Rhyn, near Oswestry, who died on July 31, had been diagnosed over the phone by a GP as having swine flu and was prescribed Tamiflu.

Her father, who with family and friends has been campaigning for an end to over the telephone diagnosis, says his daughter should not have died from tonsillitis. The meeting has been organised with the help of North Shropshire MP, Owen Paterson, who had a meeting with health minister, Andy Burnham, this week about Charlotte.

“This is an appalling and tragic case and lessons have to be learned,” Mr Paterson said.

Mr Hartey said he had felt incredibly frustrated over the past two months because he himself had been unable to meet the health minister.

“In a way it has been for the best,” he said. “Now I have finally been given the chance to have talks with a senior health expert, I will be talking, not through emotion, but with knowledge and with facts.

“Over the 20 hours that I have spent in 10 different meetings with the medical profession over the past months I have learned a great deal about what did and, more to the point, what did not happen in Charlotte’s care.

“Things have to change, not just in telephone diagnosis but in other aspects of care. We will continue until changes are made to the system so that no other child or parent has to go through what we have gone through and no other doctor is put in this position.”

An online petition calling for the end of over the telephone diagnosis has already collected between 16,000 and 17,000 names.

The petition was set up by the Charlotte Hartey Foundation which has been launched by her family to raise funds in her memory for good causes.