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BBC News
a day ago
- Health
- BBC News
Tanya Nasir who lied to get Bridgend nursing job banned
A woman who lied about her qualifications to get a job as a senior nurse caring for sick and premature babies has been banned from the profession. Tanya Nasir, 45, from Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, became ward manager on the neonatal unit at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend in 2019, after she lied about being a highly qualified neonatal nurse and an Army combat was found guilty on nine counts of fraud and false representation and jailed for five years in October 2024. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) committee concluded Nasir's actions would put vulnerable patients at "a real risk of significant harm, which could have had catastrophic consequences". Nasir, who did not attend the NMC fitness to practise hearing on 23 May, had shown "no evidence of insight or remorse for her actions" said NMC representative Naa-Adjeley Barnor. Ms Barnor said Nasir was previously convicted for fraudulently claiming welfare benefits in 2010, and there was a "significant risk" that Nasir would repeat such behaviour in the future. The panel also considered that Nasir took steps to cover up the fraud when she realised it was being said Nasir's actions had been "sophisticated and planned" which represented "deep seated attitudinal issues".As a result, Ms Barnor said the only appropriate and proportionate sanction would be a striking-off order.
ABC News
3 days ago
- ABC News
Convicted baby killer Lucy Letby is languishing in prison. There's just one, big problem
The idea of a nurse, ostensibly sweet mannered and competent, coldly killing tiny, frail babies in her care is bone-chilling. When the young British neonatal nurse Lucy Letby was accused of murdering numerous infants, we gasped in horror and the media fed our incomprehension and appetites by providing colourful, constant coverage of the charges and trial. It seemed like it was sewn up. Letby had written incriminating entries in her diaries and googled the parents of the babies she had allegedly killed by injecting oxygen into their veins, poisoning them with insulin, and feeding them too much milk. But, most damning of all was the graph which was printed over and over, showing a list of nursing staff against a list of the babies who had died between June 2015 and 2016: Letby had been present, every single time. She was convicted in August 2023 of seven counts of murder and other attempted murders, and is currently serving multiple life sentences with no chance of release. Letby was the fourth woman in British history to be sentenced to die in jail. "She has thrown open the door to Hell," the Daily Mail wrote, "and the stench of evil overwhelms us all." There's only one problem — the cacophony of globally renowned expert voices, some of whose research was heavily relied on by the prosecution, now saying in unison: there is no evidence of wrongdoing. As David Conn wrote in the Guardian, "It is unprecedented that so large a group of experts with such distinguished reputations have so rapidly, publicly and comprehensively spoken out to dispute convictions for murder." The whole thing is awful: grieving parents facing the reopening of painful cases and painful discussions again, and yet also, a potentially innocent woman languishing in jail after a miscarriage of justice and poorly run case. And the grim fact that a public who lapped up the stories of the evil nurse has now largely lost interest. I do not know if Letby is guilty or innocent, but this apparent contradiction between the legal system and medical experts is troubling. The detail is thick and few of us are equipped to deal with the medical and scientific complexities of this case. But this is exactly the problem — the idea of an evil killer, dressed in scrubs, is so spine-tingling that we throw caution. There are several lessons to be learned from this sorry saga; here are just three. In May 2024 an extensive, 13,000 word investigative piece in the New Yorker was the first substantial work to tip people off to the fact that "in the rush to judgement, serious questions about the evidence were ignored." But the man whose slender 1989 academic paper was relied upon by the prosecution to link mottled skin to a pulmonary vascular air embolism (and, they argued, thereby an injection of air into the babies' veins) had been alarmed months before, once he was made aware of the case. Dr Shoo Lee is a respected Canadian neonatalist who argued before the Court of Appeal that the prosecution's expert witness had fundamentally misinterpreted his work. He said none of the babies in the trial should have been diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism and alternatives should be considered. When the court rejected the appeal request, Lee assembled a 14-strong team of the most respected paediatric and neonatal specialists in the world, including a former president of Britain's Royal College of Pediatrics and a former director of Boston Children's Hospital's neonatal intensive care unit. Dr Lee promised to release their conclusions whatever they were. And they were incendiary: finding no medical evidence that Letby had murdered or attempted to murder any baby in her care. The report was 698 pages long. At a press conference in February this year, Lee said there had been serious errors and failings in medical care, and some of the deaths could have been prevented. One panel member, Dr Neena Modi, neonatology professor at Imperial College London, said: "There was a combination of babies being delivered in the wrong place, delayed diagnosis and inappropriate or absent treatment." Police shared a graph showing Letby's presence — marked with an X — at the time of each "suspicious incident" involving the deterioration or death of a baby with the media, which reprinted it numerous times. But, as the New Yorker pointed out, "the chart didn't account for any other factors influencing the mortality rate on the unit. It gave an impression of mathematical clarity and coherence, distracting from another possibility: that there had never been any crimes at all." The neonatal unit Letby worked at, at the Countess of Chester Hospital, run by the National Health Service, in the west of England, was struggling, and a 2016 review by a team from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health found there were inadequate numbers of doctors and nurses. There had been more deaths in the maternal ward as well as neonatal care. Law Professor Burkhard Schafer from the University of Edinburgh argues this graph shows police are skilled at looking for a responsible human, not "finding a systemic problem in an organisation like the National Health Service, after decades of underfunding, where you have overworked people cutting little corners with very vulnerable babies who are already in a risk category." When Schafer saw the diagram of suspicious events, an alarm bell rang. To be true, he says, such a diagram should have included all deaths in the unit, not just those in court, and it should have covered more time. The diagram the police issued has been likened to the "Texas sharpshooter fallacy". Imagine a shooter firing bullets into the side of a barn, then tracing a bulls-eye around the area where most bullets penetrated. In other words, statistical mistakes can be made when analysts ignore a big data set in favour of a small cluster that fits a convenient theory. This exact mistake had been made in cases about two nurses accused of murder before, in the Netherlands and in Italy, leading to a miscarriage of justice due to the belief that "a coincidence cannot be a coincidence". Both spent time in prison and both were later exonerated. This "X" diagram was crucial in the Letby case. As David Conn writes: …there was no evidence against Letby, only the consultants' suspicions due to the statistical coincidence of her having been on shift. Nobody ever saw her harm a baby or commit any of the acts — injecting babies with air, or lacing two feeding bags with insulin — of which she would later be accused and found guilty, and there has never been any tangible or forensic evidence of her doing so. She was well respected as a committed young nurse, who had taken intensive care qualifications, and would volunteer for extra work and overtime when the unit was stretched. Senior staff believed that this explained why she was often on shift for the sickest babies. Especially if insufficient evidence is given and complexity is skipped over. Those following the case read about notes written by Letby that police found in her house, which contained these contradictory statements, some of which appeared to show guilt: "WHY ME?"; "I haven't done anything wrong"; "I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them"; "I AM EVIL I DID THIS." She wrote, too, "We tried our best and it wasn't enough." We didn't read of the police video where she said she was processing the guilt of having babies die on her watch: "It was just a way of me getting my feelings out onto paper." Her self-loathing was wrapped in up feelings of incompetence, and the stress of suspicion. Psychologists have said these notes were "meaningless as evidence." Then there was the fact that Letby had googled the names of the parents whose babies had died afterwards, 31 times. This confused me when I read it. What I didn't know was that this was somewhat of a compulsive habit of hers — she seemed to google everyone she met — during the year of the investigation, she had conducted 2,287 searches for people online, saying later she was always on her phone. Her last hope seems to be the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which examines possible miscarriages of justice. Another public inquiry is underway into how murders such as these could have taken place in NHS hospitals, though in August 2024, 24 British experts — doctors, nurses and scientists — sent a letter to the government urging them to postpone or delay such an inquiry due to concern about a failure to learn lessons from "possible negligent deaths that were presumed to be murders". It is up to the courts to decide if there has been miscarriage of justice. Perhaps, in the interests of public confidence, they will take the chance to do so. Whatever happens, we must be acutely conscious of the suffering parents who have been through a horrific ordeal, losing a child then enduring a gruelling public trial. Surely, more than anyone, they deserve to know the truth. Juila Baird is an author, broadcaster, journalist and co-host of the ABC podcast, Not Stupid.
Zawya
28-05-2025
- General
- Zawya
World Health Organization (WHO) launches 'Roda de Saúde': A platform for dialogue on health in Angola
The World Health Organization (WHO) in Angola is pleased to announce the launch of 'Roda de Saúde', a new monthly series of public conversations aimed at informing, involving, and empowering Angolan institutions and society around the main public health challenges and potential solutions. The first edition of Roda de Saúde will take place at the Private University of Angola (UPRA) on Friday, May 30, 2025, between 10:00 and 11:30. Under the theme 'Celebrating the Nursing Workforce: The Role of Nursing in Reducing Maternal and Neonatal Mortality', the event will bring together WHO experts, representatives of the Angolan Order of Nurses, UPRA lecturers and students, as well as nurses working on the front line who will share their experience in the field. This first edition aims to celebrate International Nurses' Day, which falls on May 12th. With the 'Wheel of Health', the WHO aims to help promote open dialogue between decision-makers, experts, and civil society, foster informed public debate on critical health issues, and strengthen health literacy based on scientific evidence. The organization also aims to bring the population closer to trusted experts, including UN agencies and national health and academic institutions, and to strengthen collaboration between the WHO, multilateral and private sector partners, academia, and civil society. Inspired by the traditional Angolan 'Rodas de Conversa', this platform values knowledge sharing, inclusion, and community participation as pillars for identifying lasting solutions to address Angola's public health challenges. By celebrating nursing professionals and their crucial role in maternal and newborn health, the first edition of 'Roda de Saúde' lays the foundations for an ongoing movement of positive transformation in health in Angola. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of World Health Organization (WHO) - Angola.
Irish Times
16-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Times
10th review initiated at Portiuncula Hospital after death of baby
A further review into maternity care provided at Portiuncula Hospital in Co Galway has begun following the death of a baby in recent weeks, the HSE has confirmed. It is now the 10th review that is taking place into the care given to women and babies at the hospital. The investigations were initiated after six babies delivered in 2024 and one in 2025 had hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE) – a reduction in the supply of blood or oxygen to a baby's brain before, during or after birth. Six of these babies were referred for neonatal therapeutic hypothermia known as neonatal cooling. In addition, two stillbirths occurred at the hospital in 2023 and the circumstances were also being reviewed externally. READ MORE None of the external reviews, nine of which were announced in January, has been completed to date. It is understood the death of another baby occurred over recent weeks and an external review was initiated shortly afterwards. The HSE said it was engaging with the family at this time. The HSE announced in late January that external reviews were being conducted into the delivery of nine babies at the hospital and the expectation was that most of them would be concluded by early March. A spokeswoman for the HSE said it anticipates a number of them will be completed 'shortly'. 'A further external review has recently commenced into the care provided to a pregnant woman at the hospital, where sadly her baby died,' a spokeswoman for HSE West and North West told The Irish Times on Thursday. 'This brings to 10 the number of reviews underway into care provided to women and babies at the hospital.' [ Portiuncula hospital reviews will need to examine three key factors Opens in new window ] Dr Pat Nash, regional clinical director for HSE West and North West, said in January he expected seven of the reviews would be completed in the next month, while the other two would take another three to four months. The HSE said the reviews being carried out at the hospital were 'independent and external to the hospital and region'. 'This process is ongoing, once completed the findings of each individual review will be shared with the families involved,' it said. It added it was important to give the review teams 'time and space' to conclude their work. It is understood one team is conducting five of the reviews with a number of other teams overseeing the others. An external management team remains in place in Portiuncula Hospital to 'oversee all elements' of maternity and neonatal care. 'The team are working closely with the women and children's network in the region and the local maternity unit to ensure quality and safety in the service,' the HSE said. A spokeswoman for the Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said last week that she had met with the families involved in the cases being reviewed. 'She [the Minister] is aware that the reviews are ongoing and understands that they are expected to be completed soon,' the spokeswoman said. 'Once the review reports are completed, these will be shared with the families, and other key stakeholders including the Minister. The Minister has asked the HSE to keep the families updated throughout this process and provide whatever supports they require.' A previous inquiry into maternity services at the hospital was established in early 2015 with James Walker, professor of obstetrics at the University of Leeds, appointed to head it. The findings of the Walker report, published in May 2018, identified multiple serious failures including staffing issues, a lack of training and poor communication among maternity staff, which contributed to the death of three babies. Of the 18 births examined, six involved either still births or the death of the baby shortly after delivery.
Daily Mail
08-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Baby died at just three days old after nurses 'laughed off' mum's plea for C-section which would have saved her life - and congratulated dad moments before admitting girl was 'born dead'
The 'devastated' father of a newborn baby who died after medics ignored multiple warning signs that she was in distress has revealed he shook the hands of staff before discovering the role they played in the tragedy. Dan Russo and his wife Bryony begged for a caesarean section to be carried out when they arrived at the maternity unit as they knew something was wrong. But staff 'laughed off' their concerns, despite red flags including encomium – a baby's faecal matter - in Mrs Russo's waters and scans showing an abnormal foetal heart rate. Baby Emmy was not breathing when she was finally born by emergency C-section 11 hours after the couple turned up at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex. She died in her father's arms three days later at the neonatal intensive care unit of Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where she had been transferred for urgent care. Speaking after an inquest where the coroner said Emmy could have survived if she had been delivered earlier by caesarean section, Mr Russo said: 'We are completely broken by the loss of our beautiful baby girl, Emmy. 'She was our child, so loved, so wanted, and we will never understand where things went so tragically wrong. 'We did everything that we were told, we followed the advice we were given. But deep down we knew something wasn't right. We voiced our concerns again and again but we were dismissed.' He added: 'I shook the hands of the people that played a part in the death of my daughter. 'It wasn't that they weren't nice or the culture wasn't nice. It was that they didn't do their job properly.' Addressing staff directly, he said: 'If you'd done your job properly and noticed what everyone else had noticed, our daughter would be with us today.' Mrs Russo revealed she had lost her job of ten years as a recruitment manager following the shock bereavement, as the terrible grief left her unable to leave the house for four months. She said: 'You lose any direction of life. How I experience grief is a continuous reel of what happened.' They are considering civil action against The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust now that the inquest has finished. Mrs Russo, 34, was 41 weeks and three days into her pregnancy when she went into labour and travelled the short distance to the hospital from their home in Harlow with her husband at 10am on January 9 last year. She called in advance and told staff she had found what she believed was encomium in her underwear. 'When we knew encomium was starting to show, I felt that Emmy was too high up in my belly,' Mrs Russo said. 'I've never had a baby before, so it was just an instinct, a feeling of I couldn't see my baby naturally coming out that way.' She asked for a C-section but her husband, 36, who is director of a construction company, recalled: 'Bryony was laughed off and she was really upset by this.' But he kept his faith in the staff, adding: 'I kept telling Bryony 'Please trust them, they're professionals, so let them do their job.'' It was seven hours before Mrs Russo was seen by a doctor and given an ultrasound scan, despite a foetal heart rate monitor showing an abnormal trace from the moment it was attached. Essex assistant coroner Thea Wilson said there had been 'miscommunication between doctors and midwives' about the severity of the problems Emmy was facing. Both were 'falsely reassured' by incorrect assumptions about the others' intentions. Emmy was left with a severe brain injury due to oxygen starvation and had to be immediately resuscitated before she was moved to the neonatal unit and later to Addenbrooke's. Mr Russo described a disturbing scene where staff initially congratulated him on becoming a father before telling him his daughter had been 'born dead'. 'In one minute, I went through the emotions of thinking it was all okay, to confusion, to heartbreak,' he told the inquest. The couple suffered further anguish at Addenbrooke's, where they 'had to ask for earplugs' to avoid the 'distressing' sound of being 'surrounded by happy families with their babies'. They eventually decided to allow Emmy's life support to be switched off after an MRI scan showed the extent of her brain injuries. 'She would never know her own name or breathe on her own,' Mrs Russo told the hearing in Chelmsford. 'After trying to think for half an hour, we decided to let Emmy choose [her path] as she had been through enough. 'We held her for two hours without oxygen, she died in Dan's arms. 'It has had a huge impact on us as a family. The prospect of having more children has been shattered. We're consumed by fear that history will repeat itself.' A post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as severe hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, where a brain injury is caused to a baby around the time of birth due to oxygen deprivation, with placental dysfunction. During the inquest, midwife Megan Fletcher defended her decision not to escalate concerns to a senior doctor, explaining she had wanted to avoid 'invasive procedures'. But independent expert obstetrician Teresa Kelly said there had been sufficient evidence 'this baby wasn't coping with labour' and staff should have acted sooner. Ms Wilson yesterday said there were multiple missed opportunities for a 'holistic review' of Mrs Russo's condition and that of her unborn child as she recorded a narrative conclusion. Concluding Emmy's chances would have been dramatically improved if delivered even an hour earlier, she added: 'She would have been born in a better condition and, on the balance of probabilities, she would have survived. 'There was a failure to respond adequately to the request for a C-section.' The coroner will be issuing a Prevention of Future Deaths report to the hospital to make sure correct information is given to mothers-to-be about prolonged pregnancies, induction and C-section deliveries. She also requested proof the hospital was improving training and communication between staff. Speaking after the inquest, Sharon McNally, chief nurse and deputy chief executive at The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, said: 'We recognise the coroner's findings and we sincerely apologise to baby Emmy's family.' Last year, the trust was criticised after blowing £58,000 sending 14 staff on a fact-finding jolly to a Las Vegas technology conference, including a five-night stay in a casino hotel. It had been rated as 'requires improvement' by the care regulator and ended the previous year with a £13 million deficit.
