Our hearts and thoughts go out to the  families  of babies who died at the Countess of Chester Hospital Waiting, hoping and praying that  a very sick new-born will come through leaves a permanent  memory in the minds of the whole family. Thankfully many babies do make it through and grow into healthy children and adults.

Sadly some babies don’t make it and  hearts break.  How incredibly hard it must be for parents and families who also find that their baby’s death is possibly a murder. The emotional  pain must be extreme.

Our thoughts go also to the staff who work in the hospital who have worked hard and professionally.

This has been a long chain of investigations some of which we have reported. We do not know and cannot comment on the guilt or otherwise of the case against the arrested nurse. That must go through the courts.

We do know that the NHS needs to reduce workload and increase the democracy in the management  of staff, making more staff more confident  to raise concerns.

The chain of events looks something like this. The numbers of deaths  looked wrong. A report was commissioned. Then there was a follow up report, admissions  of the most complex cases were restricted,  the police were involved and now an arrest has been made. What happens now will be decided in the courts.

A year ago the Countess Of Chester Hospital published the following statement here