Precautions could have stopped baby deaths

"Reasonable precautions" could have prevented the deaths of three newborn babies, a fatal accident inquiry has found.

Leo Lamont, Ellie McCormick and Mira-Belle Bosch all died within hours of their births in two Lanarkshire hospitals, in 2019 and 2021.

The report found all three deaths could "realistically" have been avoided had different advice been given by midwives or procedures followed.

The McCormick family said they could "never have imagined" the amount of failures that led to their daughter's death and called it a "catalogue of errors".

The inquiry ruled "defects" within the system contributed to each death, including that there was a "lack of an effective means" to highlight risks in one of the pregnancies and that midwives had no guidance to assess preterm labour symptoms.

Sheriff Principal Aisha Anwar KC made 11 recommendations for the future, including creating a "trigger list" to identify and assess early labour symptoms.

Among these are reviewing electronic patient information records to improve alerts for at risk mothers, and having a direct telephone line to each maternity unit in Scotland for ambulance crews.

In a statement, the McCormick family said: "The family could simply never have imagined the scale of both the individual and systems failures that came to light during the inquiry.

"What seemed to be flaws with the electronic system of record keeping actually turned out to be a catalogue of errors with numerous opportunities to avoid the tragic outcome that followed."

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Source: BBC News, 18 March 2025