One young girl was recently awarded £4 million in medical negligence damages after it was found that injuries she sustained at her birth were due to mistakes made by medical staff, it has recently been reported.
Little ‘Baby B,’ as she has been known in court – as her true identity has been kept confidential in order to preserve her anonymity – suffered devastating brain damage during her delivery in April of 2007 in Ashford, Kent at the William Harvey Hospital. Due to the errors medical professionals made at the hospital – which is the responsibility of the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Trust – Baby B was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a condition that leaves her paralysed and unable to care for herself in nearly any way whatsoever. The young girl’s parents took the NHS Trust to task, making a personal injury compensation claim on their daughter’s behalf, and now London’s High Court has handed down their decision: the hospital’s failure to perform a caesarean section in a timely manner was responsible for the injuries that led to her cerebral palsy.
As a result, the NHS Trust now must pay the family compensatory damages of £1.6 million in a lump sum payment, and then pay an additional payment of between £185,000 and £270,000 for the rest of the child’s life. The payments will go towards providing the now five year old Baby B with the lifetime care she so desperately needs.
The NHS Trust was not immediately available for comment in the wake of the court decision.