Hospital failures cause baby to die three hours after delivery

A newborn baby died after staff at a Manchester hospital 'dismissed and ignored' his mother's concerns whilst pregnant.

Even though Mumba Kafula's pregnancy was categorised as 'high risk', in the hours before her baby was born her worries were ignored.

An inquest heard that baby Malachi should have been delivered a few hours earlier and if he had then he would probably have survived but the caesarean section was delayed.

Docotrs and midwives missed 'several opportunities' to realise the unborn baby was ill as there were suspicious readings of his heart on the CTG scans.

Lesley Herbertson, senior solicitor in the clinical negligence department at Potter Rees Dolan, said:

The report of the inquest into the death of Malachi Kafula at St Mary’s Hospital makes shocking reading. St Mary’s Hospital has for a long time had a reputation as being a centre of excellence for maternity services and it is astonishing that the staff there made so many errors during the care of just one of their patients.

Maternity units can be very busy and the staff working in them over-stretched. However, there is no excuse for the fundamental omissions that have been highlighted in the care of Mrs Kafula and her unborn child. At Potter Rees Dolan we deal with many cases involving the injury to, and sometimes death of, babies caused by obstetric mismanagement.

Based on that experience we know that it is fundamental that a mum-to-be’s concerns are taken seriously, that the baby’s well-being is properly assessed by way of the CTG trace and that appropriately qualified staff are involved as and when required. It is more than sad that babies suffer brain injury or die due to a level of substandard management that is unacceptable in this day and age.

The coroner highlighted a total of seven failings including; failure to recognise the baby was at risk of death in the morning, failure to interpret the CTG scans properly and lack of communication between staff at hand-overs.

Our clinical negligence team specialise in birth injury compensation claims for medical mismanagement at birth including neonatal death like this sad case.

Read about how we acted for a mother after one of her twins died during delivery and how we were successful in obtaining compensation of over £2 million for the parents of a brain injured baby for his care and support.

You can read about other case studies involved birth injuries on our dedicated clinical negligence case studies page.

Lesley Herbertson is a senior clinical negligence solicitor here at Potter Rees Dolan. Should you have any queries about clinical negligence issues or indeed any other aspect of this article and wish to speak to Lesley or any other member of the team please contact us on 0161 237 5888 or email Lesley directly.