Mother of baby Letby tried to kill demands managers held accountable
by Liz Hull · Mail OnlineThe mother of a premature baby girl that Lucy Letby tried to kill has demanded NHS hospital managers be held 'personally' accountable for their decisions - amid fears children could have been saved if they had acted sooner.
The neo-natal nurse tampered with the breathing tube of the infant, who was born 15 weeks early and known as Baby K, two hours after her birth, in February 2016, causing her to collapse.
She was resuscitated and transferred to a more specialised hospital a few hours later but died aged four days.
Dr Ravi Jayaram, a senior paediatrician who has appeared regularly on television, told Letby's trial he walked into Baby K's nursery to find her watching the tot and 'doing nothing.'
By this time, the medic and his colleagues on the neo-natal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, had already begun voicing suspicions about Letby and her association with a rise in unexpected collapses and deaths to senior executives, but she wasn't removed from working.
Letby went on to kill two of three triplet brothers and harm another three baby boys before she was finally removed from the unit, in June 2016.
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Giving evidence to the public inquiry into Letby's crimes, Baby K's mother said there was a 'disconnect' between doctors and managers at the hospital, who didn't listen to the clinician's concerns.
'Actions could have been put into place by management a lot sooner,' she said.
'They need to personally be (held) accountable. They are dealing with people's lives and the impact of that is forever.
'It doesn't stop at just myself and my husband, the ripples are unbelievable. You don't appreciate until you are in it.
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'It scars your life, it changes you. You are not only grieving your daughter, we're grieving for who we were, as a husband and a wife.
'It just completely destroys what's around you. You have to pick yourself up and find out who you are again, in this new world.
'It just doesn't stop, it just doesn't go away and we live with it every single day and for no one to take accountability for that, it's not right.'
She said managers had 'protected themselves' and there needed to be change in the NHS to stop it happening again.
The inquiry has heard that the families of Letby's victims believe senior executives put reputations before patient safety, which they have denied.
Some families and doctors have called for a regulatory body for senior NHS staff, akin to the medics' watchdog, the General Medical Council, to stop poor performing managers moving from hospital to hospital without censure.
Earlier, Baby K's mother said she and her husband had no inkling of any problems with Baby K's care until the police contacted them to say they were investigating in May 2017 – more than a year after her death.
She said they had no idea that Letby had tried to dislodge their daughter's breathing tube three times before she was transferred, and they only learnt a couple of months before Letby's first criminal trial began in 2022, about the 'method' of harm.
Letby was originally charged with Baby K's murder but the charge was downgraded by prosecutors to attempted murder before the original trial began amid concerns they could not prove Letby's attack caused her subsequent death.
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The jury failed to reach a verdict in Baby K's case but Letby was convicted following a retrial, in July. She is trying to appeal the verdict.
The public inquiry into Letby's crimes has already been told that Baby K's parents 'understandably' believe Letby murdered their daughter.
Baby K's parents said that if they had been told about their daughter's first collapse they would never have left her cot-side.
But nobody told them about any problem or tube dislodgement - even when they first visited their daughter around 45 minutes later. They had been 'oblivious,' they said.
The public inquiry also heard from the parents of Baby J whom Letby had left recovering from bowel surgery in just a towel covered in her own excrement.
The parents complained to a senior consultant and the manager of the neo-natal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital after arriving to find their premature-born daughter in a 'state' and at serious risk of infection.
But they told the public inquiry that they had no idea until they 'recently' acquired her medical notes that Letby had been the nurse in charge of her care which had been a 'big shock to us'.
Letby was charged with the attempted murder of Baby J, around two weeks before this incident, in December 2015, but the jury failed to reach a verdict in her case.
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Giving evidence to the Thirlwall Inquiry, which is looking into Letby's crimes, Baby J's mother said she was 'disgusted and incredibly saddened' when she arrived at the neo-natal unit on December 15, 2015 to find her daughter, who had a stoma, or an opening in the abdomen to allow the bowel to rest after surgery, with no bag to collect her waste, and covered in excrement with just a small towel over her.
Three weeks earlier Baby J had suffered a seizure, which doctors had been unable to explain, and had to be resuscitated. At the trial Letby was accused of smothering Baby J, causing her to suffer a fit.
Baby J's mother said that, by December 15, she was extremely worried her daughter, who had a central line or catheter into her heart, could pick up an infection and become unwell again.
She and her husband had a meeting with Eirian Powell, the unit manager, and consultant Murthi Saladi, but they didn't 'own' what happened and instead the couple were made to feel 'the challenge,' she said.
The couple were told they were 'tired' and needed to go home 'to rest,' Baby J's father told the hearing.
'It was very frustrating and quite condescending that we were making a complaint about finding our child with a Broviac line under a towel covered in her own faeces and the conclusion was we should have some rest,' he said. 'That wasn't the conclusion I was expecting and I was quite annoyed by the answer.'
Baby J's father said the failure to properly investigate their complaint was another 'missed opportunity' to investigate Letby.
His wife described an 'uneasy' atmosphere on the neo-natal unit at Chester.
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She said she and her husband felt their daughter had been better looked after at Alder Hey Children's Hospital, where she was transferred immediately after birth for surgery, and nurses at the Countess were ill-equipped to care for her daughter's complex needs when they returned.
But it wasn't an environment where she dared risk 'criticising the nursing care' and requests were met with 'reluctance' and 'like they would roll their eyes' at parents, she added.
In fact, the hearing was told, Baby J's parents became so concerned about the care she was receiving at the Countess that, when she collapsed unexpectedly again, on December 17, and was transferred to St Mary's Hospital, in Manchester, they refused to allow her to be returned to Chester.
Letby was on duty but never charged in connection with this collapse.
Instead, Baby J was moved to Alder Hey for surgery to reverse her stoma later that month and within a few weeks was well enough to go home.
Baby J's mother became tearful as she told the hearing that, although their daughter survived and was now a 'healthy and happy' child, the case had 'cast a shadow of sadness' over every part of their lives.
The couple said they were kept in the dark about how their daughter suffered several collapses before she stopped breathing the first time and only learned the truth about how unwell she had been when they listened to the evidence at the former neo-natal nurse's trial – eight years later.
They called for CCTV to be installed next to every baby's incubator in neo-natal units.
Baby J's father said: 'I believe that generally in this period CCTV would have answered a number of questions that will be probably remain unanswered forever for a number of parents.
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'I think there is a concern generally in society about the amount of CCTV but this is the vulnerable members of our society, our babies and the elderly, and in those cases I also believe they deserve the right to be protected in any way that is necessary.
'People who are working in those settings should accept that as part of them wanting to do the right thing and be in an environment that is 100 per cent dedicated to the patients and their safety.'
He said he could not understand why more action was not taken before the collapses of his daughter as consultants had already expressed concerns about Letby's presence when babies died on the unit.
He added it was 'inconceivable' and 'ludicrous' that she was later moved from the neo-natal unit to a role at the hospital's Risk and Patient Safety Office in July 2016, despite fears she had deliberately harmed infants in her care.
Letby, of Hereford, is serving a whole life tariff after being convicted of the murder of seven babies and attempted murder of seven more, between June 2015 and June 2016.
The inquiry, expected to last until January, continues.