MORE HORROR STORIES FROM BRITAIN

Four times in seven days Premalatha Jeevagan needed urgent care as complication followed complication during the birth of her first child. The accountancy student might have thought that she was in the right place — the maternity ward of a leading London hospital — but four times she failed to get the help she needed and, after a few minutes with her baby daughter, she was dead.

Her husband was, he said, reduced to screaming at the doctors who broke the news to him: “What are you guys doing?” Selvaratanam Jeevagan is one of ten men whose children have been left without mothers after three years during which the maternal death rate at Northwick Park hospital soared to more than five times the national average. He lives in a quiet street within view of the new Wembley stadium. His daughter, Lathika, will be one next month. She sits on his knee in their front room, bewildered by The Times’s photographer’s flashbulb but too brave to cry. Not so her father, who is no longer taking anti-depressants but is unsure whether he can handle going back to work on the London Underground. “You never recover from this,” Mr Jeevagan, 34, said. “You cry every day, you cry inside, even if others can’t see it.”

The latest tragedy linked to the Northwick Park maternity unit was last month when Anna Marie Denso, a Filipina nurse, died after surgery during childbirth. Doctors are believed to have removed her liver as well as her uterus. One result is the legal case being prepared against the hospital by Mrs Denso’s husband, Andrew, with the help of the Philippines’ Ambassador to London. Another was the decision last week by John Reid, the Health Secretary, to put the unit on “special measures”. The hospital has been held responsible in only one of the nine deaths so far examined at coroners’ inquests — the case of Mrs Jeevagan.

Yet even the most complex and ambiguous case is deeply troubling. It ended in the death of Angela Shipperley, a Jehovah’s Witness, who told hospital staff in the 21st week of her pregnancy that she would not accept a blood transfusion because of her religious beliefs. Twelve days after giving birth prematurely to her son, Joel, Mrs Shipperley was suffering from dangerously low haemoglobin levels. Told that a transfusion could save her life, she refused one again. William Dolman, the coroner, noted at the inquest her “informed decision to refuse blood against medical advice”, but her widower, Alvin, is convinced that her death was avoidable. Another treatment was available, Mr Shipperley contends: it was prescribed but not administered because of confusion over which variant of the drug would match his wife’s blood, although her blood type had been known for three months. “The sad thing is it was only after my wife died that we started learning things about Northwick Park,” Mr Shipperley said. “I told people on my street that my wife had died after giving birth and they said — no prompting from me — ‘Northwick Park’.

“It’s too late for my wife, but we need answers and they need to get their act together so it doesn’t happen to others.” Mr Shipperley, 43, is now a full-time father in Pinner, “constantly tired” but grateful for the support of two brothers and his church. He lives on his wife’s pension and death benefits, and the child benefit and child tax credit to which Joel entitles him. “You learn to cut your cloth, don’t you?” he said. “I’ve never worked so hard, but it’s the best job I have ever had.”

From The Times





AMAZING INCOMPETENCE IN SCOTLAND

But I rejoice for that tough little baby. If I were religious, I know what I would say

A mother who underwent an abortion after learning that she was pregnant with twins is suing the NHS for £250,000 after one of the babies survived. Stacy Dow, who was 16 when she found out that she was pregnant, is seeking compensation and damages for the “financial burden” of raising her daughter. Miss Dow, whose father has had to take on a second job to help to pay for his granddaughter, is claiming for “loss, injury and damage” suffered at the hands of Tayside University Hospitals NHS Trust. The teenager, who hoped to train as a nurse, decided to have an abortion as soon as she discovered that she was six weeks pregnant. Days later the procedure was carried out at Perth Royal Infirmary, where doctors advised her that no live material was left in her uterus.

When Miss Dow started to put on weight and her periods stopped, she assumed that it was because of the contraception injection she had been given. The hospital had told her that possible side-effects included weight gain and an erratic menstrual cycle. Miss Dow said: “After 33 weeks I went to the GP and he told me I was pregnant. I thought he meant I had fallen pregnant again, and I couldn’t believe it when I was told that it was one of the original pregnancies.”

Miss Dow’s daughter, Jayde, who is now a healthy three-year-old, weighed 6lb 2oz when she was delivered by Caesarean section on August 30, 2001, at the same hospital in which her mother had had the abortion seven months previously...... Miss Dow lives with her parents, Douglas, 40, and Barbara, 41. The toddler’s father, who has not been named, had been Miss Dow’s boyfriend at school. He died two years ago.

Legal documents filed at Perth Sheriff Court accuse Perth Royal Infirmary of failing “to take reasonable care to establish that the termination had been successful”. Although the NHS, which is defending the action, admits that a baby survived, it says that a doctor “checked the cavity of the uterus and could feel no further products of conception. As far as could be clinically determined the pregnancy had been terminated.” It claims that the amount sought by Miss Dow is excessive.

From The Times

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation.

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