24 August 2023 , 17:58
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A dozen more babies could have suffered at the hands of Lucy Letby, medical experts say.
The killer nurse will die behind bars after being given a whole life term for murdering seven newborns and trying to kill six others. But it is feared she may have harmed many more. It is understood the notes of 12 babies who suffered unexplained collapses have been passed to experts who found several of them indicated “malevolent acts”.
All 12 children survived and none of them featured in the nurse’s ten-month trial. That covered a period from June 2015 to June 2106 and police are now investigating Letby’s entire four-and-a-half year neonatal nursing career that began in 2012.
It includes two placements at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital in 2012 and 2015, as well as her time at the Countess of Chester Hospital, where she killed the seven babies. Detectives are poring over 4,000 admissions of newborns during her time at the two workplaces.
Letby was sentenced to life in prison (Chester Standard / SWNS.com)It is understood they have so far identified about 30 possible incidents, none of which were fatal. Cheshire Police have declined to comment on the exact number. Senior medics had raised concerns about the nurse a year before she was eventually removed from the neonatal ward.
Baby boy has spent his life in hospital as doctors are 'scared' to discharge him
A former boss at the Countess said she fears it is “more likely than not” that failures of management to deal with complaints about Letby had led to lives being lost. Dr Susan Gilby told Sky News: “[There] needs to be an external and objective review, looking at all the evidence and giving people the right of reply to that evidence, that will come to that conclusion, and not for individuals such as myself.”
Dr Gilby joined the hospital as medical director and deputy chief executive in August 2018, after Letby was arrested.