Lucy Letby whistleblower: ‘Babies would have survived if hospital had acted sooner’ (Guardian, 18 August 2023)

Summary

Babies would have survived if hospital executives had acted earlier on concerns about the nurse Lucy Letby, a senior doctor who raised the alarm has said.

In an exclusive Guardian interview, Dr Stephen Brearey accused the Countess of Chester hospital trust of being “negligent” and failing to properly address concerns he and other doctors raised about Letby as she carried out her killings.

Brearey was the first to alert a hospital executive to the fact that Letby was present at unusual deaths and collapses of babies in June 2015.

The paediatrician and his consultant colleagues raised concerns multiple times over months before Letby, then 26, was finally removed from the neonatal unit in July 2016. The police were contacted almost a year later, in May 2017.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Brearey told the Guardian that executives should have contacted the police in February 2016 when he escalated concerns about Letby and asked for an urgent meeting.