Hospital where Lucy Letby worked suffered bacteria outbreak ‘lethal’ to babies

23 comments

1. ‘It has now emerged that at the time when infant mortality rates spiked at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016 – the years in which Letby was convicted of killing the infants – the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa had colonised taps in the nurseries of the neonatal unit, including intensive care.

   Pseudomonas is known to be lethal to vulnerable babies. In 2012, a premature baby died and 12 others needed treatment at Southmead Hospital in Bristol after an outbreak of a water-borne bacterium.

   Three premature babies also died after contracting the bug at the Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital in Belfast January 2012. In that case, sink taps were found to be the source of infection. A baby had died from the same infection six weeks earlier in Derry.’

2. >”During Letby’s trial it emerged that there had been major problems with plumbing in the hospital and on one occasion human waste or sewage entered the neonatal intensive care room from the drains of a ward above.

   >The bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa colonised taps in the nurseries of the neonatal unit, including intensive care between 2015 and 2016

   >However the bacterial infection problems in the unit were never mentioned, neither during the trial nor in a report by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) who investigated the high mortality rate at the unit in 2017.”

   Jesus Christ.

3. There is a private eye podcast and article, below, where MD (Phil Hammond) is discussing the applicability of some the evidence presented and in particular the statistical evidence. Essentially saying correlation does not mean causation.
   I will let others read it to make up their own minds.
   https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/lucy-letby.pdf

4. If the kids really did die to bacterial infection then why did she write a confession at home? was that planted evidence or has she done something else?

5. I’m not a neonatologist. But from what I remember of the reported circumstances of the deaths, it did not seem as though these babies were dying from a bacteraemia. Babies on NICU get a set of bloods and cultures if they so much as sneeze, surely this would have been picked up.

6. The babies died from insulin overdoses and air embolisms I thought?

7. There’s still no reason babies would be dying at an escalated rate for her specifically compared to her colleagues though.

8. The only thing this proves is that the hospital itself was inadequate. She absolutely killed those babies.

9. It’s not uncommon for there to be issues with water systems within hospitals; it’s a constant battle to keep this sort of thing under control.

   Decades of under investment in hospital infrastructure has left a legacy that’s really difficult to manage and keep the wheels on

10. Why is there such a bias here in trying to find reasons for Letby to be innocent?

    She was found guilty in a court of law I don’t get why people are rushing to defend her. Even if you have doubts surely it’s prudent to be neutral rather than actively defending a convicted child murderer.

11. She murdered the babies, go back to the shadows at r/sciencelucyletby where you belong

12. Telegraph cannot comprehend this ‘sweat white angel’ is the angel of death and should be in jail forever. For them it’s ideological, and they don’t give a damn about the suffering they are inflicting on the families.

    Here appeal dismissal and a summery of the case against her is here: https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/r-v-letby-3/

    People shouldn’t conflate, sub consciously, the post office miscarriages of justice and this case.

13. From the trial, as I understand it, the doctors there stated there was no medical reason those babies died. They were expected to live.

    If that was the case that they did die suddenly, then surely a post-mortem would’ve been carried out, which would have involved labs and bloods. They would’ve shown signs of infection?

14. This thread is the most extreme example I’ve seen of redditors seeing *any* criticism of their own side as an act of clear and obvious support for the other side.

15. The amount of mental gymnastics people are willing to engage with on this case is really something 💀

16. I said it months ago. There is MUCH more to this case than what’s been reported and was delivered in court.

17. Can we not make defending this monster a thing, please?

18. it seems irrelevant to letby’s case because none of the babies died of a bacterial infection. at best you could argue it shows negligence by the ward/trust – but that just supports that she was able to get away with it for so long because of the failures of the trust, not that she didn’t do it

19. I’m not up to date with this and I’m not interested enough to look, I didn’t even know there was a big conspiracy about it but why is her search history used as proof of innocence, a medical professional wouldn’t need to google how to kill people.

20. Why are people so invested in saying that LL is innocent despite all the contrary evidence?

21. Maybe instead of calling people crazy for saying she is innocent, maybe take a minute to ask your self why are these people saying these things? Does give you an element of superiority to dismiss these people as trolls, stupid and conspiratorial? Yeah you’re right. Jury said so so you get to claim ignorance about how fucked up the judicial system the country you’re living in really is

22. We will be getting a ‘free Lucy Letby’ march before long…

23. She is so obviously innocent, this is a massive miscarriage of justice