King's College hospital patient 'should never have died' after childbirth says shocked husband

Abimbola Babatola died at King's College hospital following a failure to give a blood transfusion
Photo supplied by Irwin Mitchell
Ross Lydall @RossLydall30 September 2016

The husband of one of four women to die at a major London hospital after childbirth today spoke of his shock at the poor care she received after undergoing an emergency Caesarean.

Dr Oladapo Babatola said he had expected King’s College hospital — a specialist centre to which high-risk pregnancies are referred — to have been better able to cope with complex cases such as that of his wife Abimbola.

Her death was the first of four within a six-month period last year being re-investigated by external experts. An internal investigation has suggested there were “no common themes”.

Dr Babatola, a psychiatrist at Priority House Hospital in Maidstone, said: “King’s College hospital is a tertiary institution. It should not happen there. It shows they had not adequate staffing to manage severe complications. If her care had been escalated, things would have been different.”

Last year the NHS watchdog said the maternity department at King’s in Denmark Hill “requires improvement” and warned care was “not always received at the right time” during peak demand.

Earlier this month Southwark coroner Dr Andrew Harris found “neglect” in two elements of Mrs Babatola’s care — the failure to give a blood transfusion after surgery and the failure to escalate her medical care as her condition deteriorated.

He found she died from natural causes but said the failures contributed to her death. Lawyers for Dr Babatola and a fifth mother to die at King’s, 34-year-old businesswoman Gillian Nelson, are considering bringing civil claims for compensation.

Ms Nelson, from Sydenham, died in February 2014. The run of four maternal deaths, between last July and December, was not mentioned at Mrs Babatola’s inquest. “It’s quite appalling if we had another three deaths after my wife’s death,” Dr Babatola, a former obstetrician, said.

Mrs Babatola, 39, from Maidstone, who had sickle cell disease, was transferred to King’s from Tunbridge Wells hospital on July 13 last year.

She died on July 31, several days after her daughter Vivienne was born by emergency Caesarean during the night.

Richard Kayser, a medical negligence lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, representing the Babatola family, said: “We welcome the review as there are clearly concerns about what happened at that time at King’s College and questions need to be answered to ensure any lessons are learned to improve safety for future patients.”

A spokeswoman for King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: “Although it was a busy night, we had a full complement of staff working when Mrs Babatola gave birth, including an on-call consultant.”

She added that standards of maternity care had since been strengthened, and that any unwell post-natal mother in recovery or the high dependency unit had a second midwife present.

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