Baby's inquest finds serious hospital failures after family's £250k battle

A coroner has found neglect and failure to provide adequate medical care contributed to the preventable death of a baby.

Hayden Nguyen died aged six days at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London in 2016.

The conclusion came after his parents spent seven years and £250,000 fighting for justice.

In a statement, the hospital said it was "committed to learning from any findings to improve our practices".

Senior Coroner Richard Travers said in his findings that Hayden had "obvious needs that were simply not met" by clinicians when his parents took him to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in west London in August 2016.

They were concerned about a fever he had but his condition quickly deteriorated. He had a cardiac arrest and died within 12 hours of arriving at the hospital. The treatment Hayden received, Mr Travers found, fell "very seriously below expected standards" and had he received appropriate and timely care, he would have survived.

An internal investigation by the hospital following Hayden's death found there had been eight errors in the care he'd received, including failures to identify signs of septic shock and to act on abnormal test results.

However, the original inquest into Hayden's death, held at Westminster Coroner's Court in 2017, concluded he had died of natural causes.

The coroner, Dr Shirley Radcliffe, had contacted the hospital to raise concerns about their investigation.

The hospital produced a second report, which halved the number of errors found and said the root cause of Hayden's death was an infection "which is known to have a high mortality".

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Source: BBC News, 6 December 2024