SerpApi.Org
A baby said to have been killed by Lucy Letby probably died from birth trauma, an expert at Imperial College London has concluded.
Letby was convicted of murdering a little boy, labelled as Baby O, who was a triplet and had collapsed two days after birth. The prosecution argued she injected the infant with air and inflicted a liver injury, causing internal bleeding.
However, Prof Phil Bennett, an international authority on pre-term birth, has written a new report arguing that Baby O probably suffered his fatal liver injury during his delivery at the Countess of Chester Hospital in June 2016.
The report has been submitted to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which is examining Letby’s conviction following concerns about how the evidence was presented to the jury.
Prof Bennett said descriptions of the birth suggested that the obstetrician had accidentally cut one of the mother’s blood vessels, and needed to get the babies out very quickly by caesarean section, which could have led to an injury that would not have shown up for 48 hours.
“Delivery of triplets at 32 weeks is not an easy delivery, and it’s easy to conceive that some damage could be done to those babies during delivery,” the professor of obstetrics and gynaecology told BBC’s File on 4.
“There’s actually quite a good literature around this. The baby is apparently well for between one and seven days, with an average of around about 48 hours, and then the baby suddenly collapses and will often die.
“My feeling is that the experts who gave evidence in the trial had not looked properly at that literature, and so did not know that this is the usual presentation of this condition.”
‘Cold and unhygienic’ delivery rooms
Letby’s defence was not given access to the maternity notes, despite requesting to see them, and was forced to rely on the parents’ police interviews and evidence during the Thirlwall Inquiry, which is examining how the deaths could have been prevented.
Baby O’s father told the inquiry that his children were delivered in a “dingy, cold and unhygienic” room that looked like “something out of a horror film”.
When the doctor made the incision to remove the babies, blood and fluid splattered on to a wall of the theatre and landed on the mother’s head.
Prof Bennett said: “This suggests that the obstetrician probably cut through a blood vessel, and therefore they felt the need to deliver the babies as quickly as possible because you can’t stop the bleeding until the babies and the placenta have been delivered.”
The Countess of Chester has been criticised for its poor maternity services at the time. There were a significant number of stillbirths and the unit was found to be measuring babies’ heart rates incorrectly.
Recommended
Letby inquiry 'must investigate NHS failings or more babies will die'
Since Letby’s conviction, several parents have also come forward to share their stories of traumatic deliveries.
One mother told the BBC that medics had ignored her concerns that her newborn baby was sleepy and unresponsive. He later died of an enterovirus infection.
Another mother described how her baby died after doctors took too long to begin a caesarean section, leaving the infant stuck in her pelvis. An independent obstetrician and neonatologist found that the baby may have survived had delivery been started earlier or resuscitation been better.
Letby, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole life orders for the murder of seven infants and attempted murder of seven others. Since her conviction dozens of scientists, statisticians, politicians and medics have come forward to query the verdict.
Her defence argued that since no maternity notes were disclosed to trial experts, none had a full picture of the circumstances before the babies collapsed or died.
Units were ‘unfit for purpose’
Mark McDonald, Letby’s barrister, said: “Obstetric and neonatal units work hand in hand. At the Countess of Chester, both were in crisis, both were unfit for purpose, and both failed the families they were meant to protect.
“The tragedy is that the jury in Lucy’s trial never heard the full picture of what was happening in that hospital.
“As more evidence emerges, it becomes increasingly clear that an innocent woman remains in prison for crimes she did not commit.”
The Countess of Chester has apologised to the families who have experienced poor care and said the trust had made significant improvements.
The CCRC is currently deciding whether to send the case back to the Court of Appeal. Letby has been denied the right to appeal on two previous occasions.
Recommended
Britain's top forensic scientist: Something went wrong in the Lucy Letby trial
