Our primary concern now is to offer them support and be as open
Our primary concern now is to offer them support and be as open with them as we possibly can.”James Kelly Fernandez was born on 17 November, 17 weeks premature. He lived for an hour, while he was held and photographed by his mother and father. What happened after that has left Ms Fernandez traumatised – she has returned to her family in Spain – and staff at Queen Mary’s in a state of shock.The child’s body was put into refrigeration while the couple planned a funeral for 17 December. On 26 November he was moved to the hospital’s mortuary and put into a refrigerated drawer. Between 26 November and 13 December, James, wrapped in a sheet, was taken out of the drawer and put on the floor, where the body became mixed with laundry intended for a basket next to the refrigerated unit.From there, the inquiry concluded, he was scooped up with other laundry and sent to Sunlight Healthcare Services 13 miles away in Brixton.When undertakers came to collect the body on 12 December, it could not be found. Police were alerted, but the body was discovered the next day by a worker at Sunlight who was sorting laundry on a conveyor belt.
He was given counselling because of what he saw.Mr Kelly, furious at what had happened to his son, said yesterday that he believed the incident happened when the body of a baby girl was taken out of the refrigerated drawer to be handed to the undertakers. While this happened, James was put on the floor near or on the laundry, and was simply forgotten.”We think they actually picked up the female body and rushed or walked or took the body to the undertakers and left our son there on the floor, where obviously cloths and things were thrown in on top of him,” he told GMTV.”Amaia is traumatised. She has lost her son and she’s gone to Spain – for two reasons; one, to see her family to try to get over all this, and two, to get medical attention in Spain because basically it is a lot quicker for her to be checked out there. She just feels that she had to go home, she needed to recuperate. She just lost confidence in this country.”She has come to this country to be with me and she has put her life in their hands and they have fumbled the whole thing from the beginning to the end The whole pregnancy has been a nightmare. There is a catalogue of events that were wrong.”Ms Moffatt said changes were made in the mortuary on the day staff realised the baby was lost, to ensure such a incident could not happen again. One staff member had been suspended but had since returned to work, she said.
The trust is now making further inquiries under its “Disciplinary and Capability Policies”, which might result in further action being taken against staff.”The laundry basket within the mortuary was right next to a cabinet where the bodies of babies were kept and this combination has led to the mistake,” she said “This is totally unacceptable from our point of view. It is a one-off mistake of a type that has never been seen at Queen Mary’s before. I have been to the mortuary myself on many occasions in the last month.”Our staff there have the highest regard for the patients they care for through the mortuary. The staff there have been incredibly distressed and have been very energetic in solving the problem and making the changes to stop this kind of mistake ever happening again.