Guy’s and St Thomas’ Trust (GSTT), an NHS (National Health Service) Trust within the UK health system, has admitted to operating a perilously unsafe system when four premature newborns were incidentally fed with contaminated baby food. This admission surfaced during an ongoing inquest into the death of one of the affected infants.
Dr William Newsholme, a senior authority at GSTT, who is spearheading the internal investigation into the episode, confirmed this when examined during the inquest at Southwark Coroner’s Court in London. This hearing aimed to ascertain the facts surrounding the demise of Aviva Otte at St Thomas’ Hospital on 2nd January, 2014. The inquest focuses on why the findings of the tests performed on the likely infected baby food samples, conducted on 26th December, 2013, were only available on 6th January – four days after baby Otte’s death and while three others were critically ill.
Dr. Newsholme agreed that the substantial delay and the ensuing tragedy unmistakably indicated an ‘unsafe system’ at the hospital, especially in terms of preparing parenteral nutrition for the most vulnerable contingent of patients. The ongoing inquiry further explores the events linked to the deaths of two more infants, Yousef Al-Kharboush, aged nine days, and one-month-old Oscar Barker. They perished following an epidemic of Bacillus cereus five months later, also involving contaminated feed. In this outbreak, nineteen babies at nine different hospitals were infected, with three of them losing their lives. Eileen Sills, GSTT’s chief nurse during the first outbreak, had raised concerns about the delay in notifying the infection control department and whether there should have been faster action.
Astonishingly in 2022, the Guardian revealed that GSTT had never publicized the first outbreak despite the serious impact on four vulnerable newborns. Dr Grenville Fox, another senior doctor at GSTT, recently testified at the inquest, confirming that Aviva Otte indeed died from the contaminated feed. This contradicted the Trust’s narrative, insisting for over a decade that her death occurred due to ‘natural causes’. The wrongful omission of the fatality in the ‘root cause analysis’ of the investigation into the first outbreak prompted further questions. The ‘holding statement’ made available to journalists merely alluded to an ‘outbreak’ and failed to mention the fatal extent of Bacillus cereus. The trust continually rejected assertions of obscuring the details of the outbreak, denying cover-up allegations.