Stillbirth at Belfast hospital preventable, inquest finds

Christine Wright said the inquest's findings reassured her that her daughter's death was not her fault

The death of a stillborn baby girl at Belfast's Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital was preventable, an inquest has found.

Christine Wright was 37 weeks pregnant when she gave birth to Thea Webb-Wright on 29 July 2017.

The coroner said this was a complex and emotive inquest.

The stillbirth was preventable, they added, had there not been missed opportunities around the gathering of medical history and treatment.

Mrs Wright had a history of urinary tract infections (UTIs).

The coroner said that at her booking-in appointment a midwife failed to "acknowledge a GP letter detailing the history of UTIs, which would have highlighted her as being high risk".

She was not given advice on UTIs and the coroner highlighted instances where the treatment of Mrs Wright was not prompt and further investigations should have been conducted.

After a 3rd UTI, the inquest heard Mrs Wright should have been given prophylactic antibiotics which expert evidence said would have made a difference to the outcome and that her symptoms along with her UTIs should have raised alarm bells.

The coroner also highlighted the fact that Mrs Wright had changed her name from her maiden to her married name during the course of her pregnancy and there was a failure to link the two identities when urine samples were taken and lab tested.

The court heard that Thea died of foetal sepsis E. coli.

The coroner said the Belfast Trust acknowledged the findings and "there have been recommendations made as a result".

She added that it is "hoped that the improvements made would mean that lessons are learned and that this should not happen again".

'I still was blaming me'

Christine Wright told the BBC: "I still was blaming me. The fact we know more detail and the proper causes and why, this finding has put me more at ease as a mummy that it wasn't my fault."

David Wright said: "The truth has come out. Hopefully the trust take the learnings and no other parents should need to go through this what we've been through, losing our baby daughter."

Christine said: "This awful thing happened, and only for us having resources to push forward and keep fighting and keep fighting, we are were we are today.

"That was our whole thing, if we can stop this from happening to someone else, so no one experiences what we experience."

Christine says she was totally unaware of the serious dangers of UTIs in pregnancy: "I was never sat down, nothing was ever explained about the harm a UTI can cause, I was only told it could bring on early labour. We weren't given the chance to know there was something that could have been done after all the UTIs."

"She was alive, she was a baby, she moved. When she was born she was perfect. It's hard to digest that she could have been alive if people had done things right."

"We celebrate her birthday every year and we talk amongst ourselves about her".

"I still carry guilt. It just affects you in so many different ways."

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