‘We had such trust, we feel such fools’: how shocking hospital mistakes led to our daughter’s death (The Guardian, 3 September 2022)

Summary

Sharing her story in the Guardian, Merope gives a heart breaking account of how her daughter, Martha Mills, was allowed to die, but also what happens when you have blind faith in doctors – and learn too late what you should have known to save your child’s life.

Content

At the start of last summer, Merope Mills' 13-year-old daughter Martha was busy with life. She’d meet her friends in the park, make silly videos on her phone and play “kiss, marry, kill”. Her days were filled with books and memorising song lyrics. She’d wonder aloud if she might become an author, an engineer or a film director. Her future was brimming with promise, crowded with plans.

By the end of the summer she was dead, after shocking mistakes were made at one of the UK’s leading hospitals.

"Her preventable death is an example of what a hospital official described to us, in a barbarous phrase, as a 'poor outcome'. I will spend decades asking: why was my child the one to suffer such an unlikely fate?", writes Merope.

Further reading

Prevention of Future Deaths Report: Martha Mills