Mrs Alison Eddy briefed the conference on the grounds for medical negligence claims. In Mrs Eddy’s professional experience, birth injuries were largely the result of “problems not having been spotted, or problems identified but then somebody not coming when perhaps they should have come.”
GBS infections have a devastating consequence for many children and for their
Mrs Alison Eddy, Head of Clinical Negligence London, Irwin Mitchell
families, the human cost is enormous. Whether it’s life, whether it’s death, whether it’s a lifelong disability and in many cases as we’ve heard from so many speakers today these infections are preventable, treatable.
If litigation ensues, then it’s very costly, and the breaches of duty that we see tend to follow a pattern: failure to consider infection as a possible cause of complications during pregnancy; failure to prescribe and administer antibiotics during labour; failure to prescribe, administer antibiotics for early-onset neonatal infection; failures to recognise and treat sick babies in first hours after birth.”