The family of a toddler who died after an emergency room doctor allegedly failed to detect a case of malaria settled its Essex County suit on Aug. 2 for $4.5 million.

In November 2014, Janai Salifu, then a year and a half old, was taken to the emergency room at University Hospital in Newark with a fever, rapid heartbeat, vomiting, hot dry skin, and dry mucus membranes. Treating physician Dr. Noah Kondamudi was informed that the family, including Janai, had returned from a trip to Ghana about three weeks earlier, which carries a risk for contracting malaria, according to the family's attorney, David Mazie of Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman in Roseland.

Kondamudi declined to perform a blood test for malaira, and Janai was sent home; she returned to the University Hospital emergency room two days later, and a malaria test performed by a different doctor returned positive, and she was treated with malaria drugs, according to the suit.