At least 55 babies who died at the NHS trust which runs Brighton’s Royal Sussex County Hospital may have survived with better care, a review has found.
Last June, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced an independent investigation into maternity care at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, which has now been expanded to include 15 families.
The families involved are still in discussions with the Government about who will lead that investigation.
The trust carried out its own review from 2019-2023 on maternity deaths and concluded a different outcome may have been possible for 55 babies, the BBC and New Statesman first reported.
Freedom of Information (FOI) data obtained by the group Truth for Our Babies, set up by bereaved parents whose babies died, shows that between 2019 and 2023, the trust carried out 227 internal hospital reviews into maternity deaths.
At least 55 cases were given grades of C or D by the trust, indicating that different care either “may” have or was “likely” to have made a difference to the outcome.
Robert Miller’s daughter, Abigail Fowler Miller, died two days after being born at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton in January 2022.
An inquest concluded she would likely have survived if her mother, Katie Fowler, had received medical treatment sooner, with Ms Fowler also going into cardiac arrest.
Mr Miller is one of those who wants senior midwife and investigator Donna Ockenden to lead the investigation into what happened at Sussex.
He told the Press Association Ms Ockenden is “someone that families across the UK trust”, adding: “It’s about our trauma and our harm and not being re-traumatised unnecessarily.
“It’s difficult for us to accept someone who’s never done this before and is learning on the job – that’s the bottom line.
“We’re scared of being re-traumatised and having more harm done to us through this process by someone who perhaps has never done it before on this scale.”
He said a current national maternity review, ordered by the Government and led by Baroness Amos, also does not go far enough.
“We’re still of the opinion that a judge-led public inquiry is really needed to hold people to account, to really scrutinise and be able to compel people to give evidence,” he said.
On Sussex, he said: “We’re not seeing improvements quickly enough”.
A Care Quality Commission (CQC) report in December on the Royal Sussex County Hospital said its maternity care requires improvement “and that’s only up one step from inadequate four years ago”, Mr Miller said.
This is a shocking scandal considering hospitals are touted as the only safe place to have babies. Corporate manslaughter charges would seem to be in order.
*Medical Malpractice.*
Devastating… our son Caspar lost his life at Brighton hospital in 2009 due to a catalogue of errors that left him completely brain damaged.
Awful to read that so many babies have died here due to medical negligence.
All this hospital wanted to do was cover up their mistakes and cover their own backs at the cost of our previous baby.
Im so sorry to read about all these lives lost from people not doing their jobs properly.
Hi there, I lost my baby 1989. He opened his bowels and was in distress. He was delivered eventually. He should’ve been taken to the Trevor Man baby unit and give antibiotics. Instead, we were sent home 10 hours after he was born in that time he cried constantly. I took him to the doctors constantly every day for 14 days in the end I was just told it was colic and not to worry on 16 February all he done was crying scream, my husband console him and got him to sleep. My husband got up for work on 17 February, and checked on him. He was gone .we called an ambulance We were taken to the hospital. The inquest concluded that he died of a viral pneumonia that was probably down to meconium in his lungs and he got pneumonia. Sadly died on 17 February. He was born on 1 February 1989. I wanted answers and I got none we were left just to get on with it.