A NURSE, who was struck off after cheating Oxfordshire pharmacies out of almost 900 cancer pills for his dying uncle in Africa, is trying to get his case re-heard.

Borry Jatta, 40, said: "I didn't even know I had been struck off until a friend told me about last week's story in the Herald, so I was very shocked.

"I have now asked the authorities for a rehearing of the case, so I can give my side of the story.

"I did not know the hearing was taking place. I had asked for the hearing to be in September. So I was not there and I had no representative."

Mr Jatta, of Darent Place, Didcot and formerly of St Nicholas Road, Wallingford, said he was pleased to have been able to fulfil his dying uncle's last wish for medication.

To get the medicines he used fake patient prescriptions to cheat pharmacies - including two in Didcot - of powerful prostate cancer drugs, which he sent back to The Gambia.

He was struck off at a Nursing and Midwifery Council hearing at the Old Bailey, London, after the panel said that with 15 years' experience, he should have known better.

The father-of-two said he did not regret helping his uncle, Ansu Jatta, who brought him up, alongside his six siblings.

He said: "I only regret losing my nursing profession.

"It's the career I love, I have always wanted to care for people. But I'm pleased that I have been able to fulfil the last wish of my uncle.

"It has consistently been my philosophy that people should be able to die pain-free with dignity, symptoms controlled and surrounded by family and friends.

"What I did was wrong. It was a difficult decision to make because I knew that my uncle was dying and he needed the medication. I was between a rock and a hard place.

"But no patient was ever in any danger from what I was doing. Throughout my career I have never had a formal complaint made against me and I had never faced any disciplinary action."

Mr Jatta said it was family pressure that drove him to obtain 884 tablets from Tesco pharmacies in Didcot and Henley, and Boots in Didcot, between August and December 2006. At the time he was working as a district prescriber at Wallingford Medical Practice.

He said: "Every evening my uncle would call, asking for the prescription. He was in pain and he was dying. It was his last wish for me to send them to him, to allow his symptoms to be controlled."

He said he felt indebted to his uncle - who died in December 2006 - because he had looked after his family after his father died rescuing his sister from a house fire.

He said: "My uncle was a decent, hard-working man. He did everything he could to ensure that I got the education that I needed to be what I am today.

"If it wasn't for him, I don't know what would have happened to my family."

Mr Jatta said the problems had triggered the break-up of his marriage. He has two girls, aged ten and seven, who live with his ex-wife. He is staying with a friend in Birmingham.

He said: "I'm virtually unemployable now. I have a criminal record and I don't know what I'm going to do.

"Life has been very hard. I just hope one day to be allowed back to the one profession I love, which is nursing." Mr Jatta came to England from The Gambia in 1991, where he was educated at Oxford Brookes, Westminster, Liverpool and Birmingham universities, in nursing, before starting work as a nurse in Oxfordshire in 1995.