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NHS faces payout over brain damage to baby

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date11 April 2024
Publication titleEvening Chronicle
A "negligent delay" by midwives contributed to the baby's injuries, lawyers said, with the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust denying a breach of duty when it came to not "expediting" the baby's birth but accepting that midwives should have sought a doctor to review the case sooner

Lawyers for both the child - known as AWZ - and the hospital trust have agreed a compromise which will see the trust pay 55% of the damages which would have been awarded had the brain injury been found to be entirely due to negligence. The sum is yet to be decided.

The baby, who was born at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary in 2014, is profoundly disabled as a result of a "prolonged period of inter-uterine hypoxia" before he was delivered by Caesarean section.

Hypoxia is when the human body does not receive enough oxygen - and this child is believed to have been starved of oxygen for around half an hour.

The baby's mother had attended hospital with a placental abruption, which is a serious pregnancy complication. However, there was a period of 45 minutes from the mother's arrival at hospital before midwives summoned a consultant obstetrician to review the case. Then after what lawyers described as "non-reassuring" CTC scan, medics made the decision not to intervene until the baby's heart rate had collapsed.

By the time the baby was delivered, he had suffered profound hypoxic brain damage.

The hospital trust admitted breaching duty in failing to seek a medical review sooner, but denied a breach of duty and causation when it came to the decision not to bring forward the baby's delivery, which it said was a reasonable decision given there were "no clear abnormalities" in the scan. The trust's expert also argued the hypoxic event, which saw the baby starved of oxygen, would have happened had a doctor been called earlier.

The legal teams for both the family of AWZ and the hospital trust agreed the 55% compromise which was approved by a High Court judge last week.

The final value of compensation to be paid will now be negotiated - and lawyers expect this will run to a "very substantial sum of damages" likely to be finalised at a trial late next year.

The compensation will help to meet...

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