Preemie who died at NHS hospital could have survived with proper care, says doctor

During an inquest surrounding the death of a premature baby at a UK hospital, a doctor has said that the baby girl’s life could have been saved if her medical team had acted differently.

According to The Daily Mail, Nelly Webb was born at 30 weeks and weighed two pounds, nine ounces on New Year’s Day 2019. She died the following day. More than a year following her death, Nelly’s parents Jessica and Ricky were contacted by health chiefs at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in South Wales and were told that Nelly hadn’t died solely due to her premature birth, but that mistakes had been made in Nelly’s care.

During a hearing at Pontypridd Coroners’ Court, Allison Williams, the chief executive of the health board at the time, said that because Jessica Webb’s pregnancy was classified as high-risk, she should have been moved to a different hospital that could have better cared for her and her baby.

In addition, Dr. Mallinath Chakraborty explained that he found three concerns after he reviewed the medical care that Nelly received. He said he would have used a ventilator with Nelly, but that the hospital failed to do so, and alternative breathing support methods were used instead.

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Dr. Chakraborty also said there were multiple opportunities for her care to have been handled better or differently to slow down Nelly’s deterioration, and that there was a delay in proper care following a collapsed lung.

“In my judgment, there were two to three opportunities to slow down her deterioration,” he said. “I would like to think if the consultant was involved at an earlier stage and reviewed her clinically along with all the investigations and chest x-rays that were available at that time there was a reasonable prospect that a plan would have been changed and a plan to escalate her care with ventilation would have been made.”

Asked if Nelly was “rescuable” if appropriate treatment had been given, he said, “Yes.”

Two months after Nelly’s death, the Royal Glamorgan Hospital stopped providing specialist care to newborn babies following a review that had been previously planned because 21 stillbirths had occurred at the hospital. Seventeen of those deaths were caused by complications during labor. The 2019 investigation found that this hospital and the Prince Charles Hospital were “under extreme pressure” and “dysfunctional,” and were putting mothers and babies in danger.

The review found that between January 1, 2016, and September 30, 2018, one in three stillborn babies could have survived if serious mistakes had not been made.

“Nelly was our firstborn and we were absolutely heartbroken when she died,” said Ricky Webb. “We were told she died from natural causes as a result of her prematurity. We really struggled after we lost Nelly so much so that Jessica couldn’t return to her place of work. We were shocked and devastated again just 18 months later when we received a letter from the health board completely out of the blue telling us that mistakes had been made.”

Jessica said they are “still deeply traumatized by what happened and the fact that we had been lied to for so long. The legal process has exposed what really happened to our little girl which has been even more upsetting.” They were so worried about it happening again that rather than go to Royal Glamorgan Hospital for the births of their next two babies, the couple traveled to a different hospital to give birth.