"How can he go from having a 90 per cent chance of survival to dying 36 hours later? It was a comedy of errors in the hospital that contributed to his death. It wasn't just meningitis that led to his death," Mr Brown said.
"They took a CT scan of Ben's brain that showed he had swelling of the brain, but nobody read at the scan for 36 hours ... they gave a verbal okay, but if they'd have looked at it at the time things may have been different."
"A lumbar puncture was performed on a patient with a swollen brain, the report suggests that this is high risk as when the fluid is taken from the spine, the fluid under pressure in the brain wants to push down through the spine causing what is known as coning - remember the doctors did not know of the pressure on the brain as the CT scan was not read."
Two independent reports, one by an A&E; expert the other by an ICU expert, found several things were done wrong during Ben's treatment. They made a number of recommendations to ensure such things did not happen again.
Northland District Health Board has apologised to the Brown family, with chief executive Nick Chamberlain and chief medical officer Dr Mike Roberts making the apologies in person.
Dr Roberts said neither report had concluded that if certain things had been done differently Ben would definitely have survived. One concluded that, at the initial hospital presentation, there was not a clear clinical indication a lumbar puncture should have been performed.
"We accept the findings of the independent reviewers. Many of the changes they have recommended are already in place, and we will act on the other recommendations as soon as possible," he said.
Dr Roberts said it was clear from the reports that Ben Brown's care was not as good as it should have been.
"We know this must have been distressing for his family to hear. Consequently, the chief executive and I visited Mr Brown's family in person to explain details of the reports and to offer our sincere apologies on behalf of Northland DHB," he said.
He said both reports acknowledge that meningitis is notoriously difficult to diagnose and there are multiple case reports of similar diagnostic errors in New Zealand and internationally, with one reviewer pointing out "there were a number of atypical and distracting features to this case on initial presentation."
Darren Brown, however, said given that Northland was in the middle of a meningitis outbreak at the time, and there had been a death from meningitis in Whangarei the previous week, far more care and attention should have been taken with somebody who had signs of the disease.