Shropshire health boss apologises to Ludlow couple over baby's death
A health chief has apologised to a couple whose baby died just hours after being born at a hospital in Shropshire – and insisted lessons had been learned from the tragedy.
Bharti Patel-Smith said she understood why Richard Stanton and Rhiannon Davies hit out angrily at the results of £54,000 review of maternity services across the county published last month.
It revealed a largely positive picture of women's experiences at the units, and figures showed nine out of 10 women questioned were happy with their treatment while giving birth.
The couple, from Ludlow, slammed the report as nothing more than a "PR exercise" designed to paint the units in the best possible light, without acknowledging the problems, particularly at midwife-led units.
They were left devastated after their baby, Kate, died just hours after being born at Ludlow Hospital in 2009.
An inquest held last autumn found their baby might not have died had she not been born in the midwifery-led unit. Kate was delivered in March 2009 but it became apparent there were problems and she was transferred by air ambulance to Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham, where she died six hours later.
Mrs Patel-Smith, a former midwife and now director of governance at Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), said such incidents were "inevitably sad".
She said: "We have got to understand why they feel the way they do, we can never take that away. But there has been learning from what happened in every way.
"We have to examine, to understand, to improve and to make sure it doesn't happen again. From a clinical point of view it's critical, we want to make sure these similar things don't ever happen again.
"But its also important to look from a very human standpoint. The important thing when something goes wrong is to learn – and, where have made mistakes, to say sorry for them."
Rhiannon, of Dahn Drive, had earlier hit out at the review, claiming it addressed none of the critical issues still facing mums-to-be and babies in the county.
