Legal action over Coventry baby's sepsis death

A mother is launching legal action after her son died from sepsis and a pulmonary haemorrhage five days after being born.

Patrycja Majewska, 26, gave birth to Aleksander by Caesarean section, 50 hours after she was induced.

She claims staff failed to administer the correct medication and monitor her son's heartbeat during labour.

The trust that runs Coventry University Hospital has apologised and said it has since given staff sepsis training.

Prior to his death on 22 February 2016, Aleksander experienced seizures, suffered from brain damage as a result of oxygen deprivation and was put on life support.

His mother had been kept on a general ward after being induced and claims that staff did not correctly note down her white blood cell count, which would have indicated a risk of sepsis.

Ms Majewska, a recruitment agency manager from Rugby, Warwickshire, said: "This whole ordeal has broken me and now I have nothing.

"I put my faith and trust in them as professionals and they let me down."

David Thomas, clinical negligence partner at Simpson Millar who is representing Ms Majewska, said: "It is deeply concerning that it wasn't just one thing but a catalogue of errors that caused Aleksander's tragic death.

"It is important that the hospital trust looks closely at what went wrong and what can be done to make sure this doesn't happen again."

Professor Meghana Pandit, chief medical officer and deputy chief executive officer at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust "apologised unreservedly" to Ms Majewska.

She said: "We recognise that there were a number of omissions in our care of Ms Majewska and her baby Aleksander in February 2016.

"This tragic incident has been fully investigated, and we have made changes as a result, including introducing mandatory sepsis training for all our maternity staff and increasing access to paediatric radiology reporting."