Perinatal deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital - Has anyone asked the question?

 One of the continuing concerns about the prosecution of Lucy Letby is the narrow, perhaps blinkered, focus on postnatal deaths in the Neonatal Unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

Well, of course those postnatal deaths must be carefully considered.

What concerns me is that those postnatal deaths were considered in isolation.

It seems to me that they are not the only deaths which need to examined.

In my view a worthwhile consideration of the postnatal deaths would also have looked at the number of prenatal deaths i.e. stillbirths in the same institution.

At the risk of stating the obvious those babies who died or collapsed in the Neonatal Unit had in all likelihood been born in the Maternity Unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

If, hypothetically, there was a factor in the Maternity Unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital causing mortality and morbidity in the Neonatal Unit which was unrelated to Lucy Letby that hypothetical factor might also be expected to be fatally harming babies before they were born.

In the table below we can look at the number of stillbirths in the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2013 and 2018.



There is a "bourachie" of stillbirths at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2015 and 2017.

Is there a real increase in the number of stillbirths at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2015 and 2017?

Could there be a factor affecting unborn babies in the Maternity Unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital that resulted in the deaths of unborn children i.e. stillbirths and which resulted in vulnerability to death or sudden collapse after birth which would become evident in the Neonatal Unit?

To begin to answer that question there would need to be a detailed study of the causes of the stillbirths in 2015 and 2017, for example.

It would be necessary to exclude causes of stillbirth unrelated to exposure to any factor in the Maternity Unit.

As far as I'm aware the question of a factor in the Maternity Unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital that increased prenatal mortality and which might increase vulnerability to fatal or non-fatal sudden collapse in, say 2015-2017 has not been considered.

In my view it is a question that ought to have been considered by the paediatric consultants long before any referral to Cheshire Constabulary was contemplated.




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