Lucy Letby hospital boss was CEO of NHS England throughout Beverly Allitt murders
While working as a paediatric nurse at a Lincolnshire hospital, serial killer Beverley Allitt murdered 4 infants, tried to homicide three others, and triggered grievous bodily hurt to 6 extra in 1991.
The chairman of the Countess of Chester Hospital from 2012, main the belief throughout the interval of Letby’s killings, was coincidentally the identical man, Sir Duncan Nichol.
He retired from the NHS in 2019, a yr after killer nurse Letby was arrested following a sequence of unexplained child deaths on the neonatal unit the place she labored.
He has since stated the board have been ‘misled’ about Letby, claiming the board had been ‘advised explicitly that there was no legal exercise pointing to anybody particular person’ after opinions of the infant deaths have been carried out in 2016.
However, medical doctors have stated that they had been elevating issues about Letby’s conduct and presence at every of the collapses and deaths all through 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Parallels have been drawn between the killings of Letby and the crimes of Allitt. While working as a paediatric nurse at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire, Allitt was discovered to have murdered 4 infants, tried to homicide three others, and triggered grievous bodily hurt to a different six.
The then 22-year-old attacked 13 youngsters over a interval of 59 days in 1991 utilizing strategies that have been disturbingly much like these utilized by Lucy Letby. Allitt was discovered to be injecting youngsters in her care with air in addition to big doses of insulin.
She was convicted in 1993 and subsequently former decide the late Sir Cecil Clothier carried out a assessment into the circumstances surrounding the Allitt case in 1994.
Sir Duncan Nichol was requested by the Department of Health to contribute to the Clothier inquiry, look at the inquiry’s findings, report again, and instruct district well being authorities at the side of hospitals on what wanted to vary within the wake of Allitt’s murders.
One senior well being supply the Manchester Evening News spoke to stated Sir Duncan Nichol’s profession path has triggered concern in regards to the NHS reusing leaders after main failings throughout the service.
“Whilst [Allitt] was many years ago, it’s not something you would forget if you were working in the NHS at the time – where was the corporate organisational memory? It was an immediate parallel for me,” they stated.
Nichol stated in an announcement to the BBC the board was ‘misled’ when the infant deaths on the Countess of Cheshire have been being reviewed in 2016.
He stated: “I believe that the board was misled in December 2016 when it received a report on the outcome of the external, independent case reviews.
“We have been advised explicitly that there was no legal exercise pointing to anybody particular person, when in fact the investigating neonatologist had acknowledged that she had not had the time to finish the required in-depth case opinions.”
In response to Nichol’s statement, the hospital’s then chief executive, Tony Chambers, said ‘what was shared with the board was honest and open and represented our best understanding of the outcome of the reviews at the time’.
The jury in Letby’s case heard that hospital bosses ignored months of warnings about her from medical staff from as early as October 2015.
In 2015 and 2016, there was a significant rise in the numbers of babies who suffered serious and unexpected collapses in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Letby was the only member of the nursing and clinical staff who was on duty each time the collapses happened. Letby was sentenced last week to a whole life order at Manchester Crown Court.
She will never be released from jail. The 33-year-old was convicted of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six more during her shifts at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.
Mr Chambers has said he first heard ‘serious concerns’ about the nurse in June 2016, a year after she was linked to a series of unusual infant deaths.
It was not until July 2016 that Letby was moved off the neonatal unit as senior doctors demanded action following the deaths of two triplet brothers, whom she was found to have killed.
Those two deaths took Letby’s killing spree to seven in a year. This was more than double the average number of deaths in a year on the neonatal unit.
Doctors had been raising concerns about Letby’s connection to suspicious incidents for almost two years but she was not reported to the police until May 2017. She was arrested a year later.
Consultants say they were urged ‘not to make a fuss’. Letby carried on working on the neonatal unit despite the warnings. The lead consultant at Chester’s neonatal unit has alleged bosses tried to silence doctors who spoke up.
Dr Stephen Brearey said he first raised concerns about Letby in October 2015 but no action was taken – with the nurse going on to kill another two babies.
A second doctor, Ravi Jayaram, said babies’ lives could have been saved if police were called sooner. He said: “I do genuinely imagine that there are 4 or 5 infants who may very well be going to highschool now who aren’t.”
Dr Jayaram told the trial he wished he had gone straight to the police. “We have been additionally starting to get an affordable quantity of strain from senior administration on the hospital to not make a fuss.
In retrospect, we have been all grown-ups and we should always have stood up and never listened,” said Dr Jayaram. He alleged it took managers three months to respond to a request from consultants to meet them after the second time they raised concerns, in February 2016.
He told the jury: “My colleague Dr Brearey requested a gathering with them. They didn’t reply to that for an additional three months and we have been caught as a result of we had issues and didn’t know what to do.
“We were also beginning to get a reasonable amount of pressure from senior management at the hospital not to make a fuss.
“In retrospect, I wanted we had bypassed them and gone straight to the police. We not at all have been enjoying decide and jury at any level however the affiliation was changing into clearer and clearer and we would have liked to seek out the suitable means to do that. We have been in an unprecedented state of affairs.”
Dr Brearey said that in 2017 consultants were summoned to a meeting with senior managers. Dr Brearey claimed Mr Chambers told them he had spent a lot of time with Letby and her father and had apologised to them, accepting that the nurse had done nothing wrong.
According to Dr Brearey, the CEO insisted the consultants apologise to Letby – warning them that a line had been drawn and there would be ‘consequences’ if they crossed it.
Mr Chambers later reportedly denied saying Letby had done nothing wrong and said he was paraphrasing her father.
The jury heard, as concern grew about the correlation between the number of unexplained deaths while Letby was on duty, that by April 2016 the nurse was removed from night shifts and from then on only worked day shifts.
But the killing continued for another two months when Letby murdered the two triplets and attempted to murder three other babies. An inquiry has been ordered to examine the Letby killings further.
Countess CEO Tony Chambers resigned in September 2018 from his role as the chief executive of the hospital following Letby’s arrest in July 2018.
By December, he had already been given a director role at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, the Manchester Evening News exclusively revealed last week.
Mr Chambers said in a statement after Letby’s conviction: “All my ideas are with the youngsters on the coronary heart of this case and their households and family members at this extremely troublesome time. I’m really sorry for what all of the households have gone by.
“The crimes are appalling and I am deeply saddened by what has come to light. As chief executive, my focus was on the safety of the baby unit and the wellbeing of patients and staff.
“I used to be open and inclusive as I responded to data and steering. There are all the time classes to be realized and the most effective place for this to be achieved could be by an unbiased inquiry.
“I will co-operate fully and openly.”
Another of Letby’s former bosses, Alison Kelly, left her position as director of nursing on the Countess of Chester after allegations have been made to her in regards to the killer nurse by involved medical doctors.
She went on to change into the interim director of nursing at Salford Royal earlier than changing into the director of nursing for Rochdale – a place she has now been suspended from within the wake of the Letby’s conviction.
Ms Kelly has beforehand stated within the nationwide press: “It is impossible to imagine the heartache suffered by the families involved and my thoughts are very much with them. These are truly terrible crimes and I am deeply sorry that this happened to them.
“We owe it to the infants and their households to be taught classes and I’ll absolutely cooperate with the unbiased inquiry introduced.”
An NHS England spokesperson said: “We welcome the unbiased inquiry introduced by the Department of Health and Social Care into the occasions on the Countess of Chester and can cooperate absolutely to assist guarantee all classes are realized.
“In light of information that has emerged during the trial of Lucy Letby, and the announcement of the independent inquiry, the Northern Care Alliance has suspended Alison Kelly.”
NHS England and the Countess of Chester Hospital belief didn’t present a touch upon Sir Duncan Nichol’s coincidental positions when the Manchester Evening News requested for remark.