Hyponatraemia: How documentary lifted the lid on a scandal that shocked parents to the core

In October 2004, UTV broadcast a documentary called When Hospitals Kill, which examined the deaths of Raychel Ferguson, Adam Strain and Lucy Crawford.

The programme claimed the children died from hyponatraemia because they had been given too much of the wrong type of fluid while in hospitals in Northern Ireland.

The following month, the then minister with responsibility for health in Northern Ireland, Angela Smith, announced a public inquiry into the allegations made in the UTV documentary and appointed Mr John O’Hara QC as chair of the inquiry.

Claire Roberts was then added to the remit of the inquiry after her parents viewed When Hospitals Kill and raised concerns over the circumstances of her death.

Following Claire’s death, her parents were told she had died as a result of a viral infection which spread to her brain, but they never fully understood what had happened to their only daughter.

Mr O’Hara then made a decision to also examine the death of 15-year-old Conor Mitchell.

Publishing his findings in January 2018, Mr Justice O’Hara said that four of the five deaths he had examined were preventable.

In a scathing assessment of the health service, he said that “doctors and managers cannot be relied upon to do the right thing at the right time” and that some witnesses to the inquiry “had to have the truth dragged out of them”.

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Source: Belfast Telegraph, 29 March 2022