Lucy Letby: baby made dramatic recovery after removal from hospital, court told

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A baby girl made a “dramatic” recovery after she was removed from a hospital where a nurse allegedly tried twice to kill her, a court has heard.

Lucy Letby, 33, is accused of attempting to murder the six-week premature infant while working at the Countess of Chester hospital in September 2015.

A jury at Manchester crown court has been told that the baby suffered two “unexplained collapses” on night shifts when Letby was her designated nurse.

The prosecution allege that Letby tried to murder the infant, who can only be named as Child H, but the nurse’s legal team say the incidents were the result of “sub-optimal care” by her colleagues.

Letby denies murdering seven babies and attempting to kill 10 others between June 2015 and June 2016.

Jurors were told on Wednesday that Child H was taken to the neonatal unit where Letby worked shortly after she was born because she was struggling to breathe.

She was placed on a ventilator and X-rays later showed that she had a punctured lung, the court heard.

A statement by Child H’s mother, read to jurors, explained how she was called to the hospital in the early hours and found medics resuscitating her daughter.

Nurses said they could not explain the baby’s “cardiac collapse”, the jury was told, but she recovered and was “doing really well later that day”.

Jurors heard that Child H stabilised throughout the day as her parents stayed with her before they left to get some sleep in the parents’ room.

Child H’s mother said they had just gone to bed when they heard a knock on the door and staff told them they were needed back in the unit because their daughter was not responding.

She said: “We were met with an almost identical scene with multiple members of staff working with [Child H] in her incubator.”

Child H was then transferred to Arrowe Park hospital, on the Wirral, where they saw a “dramatic improvement” after medics replaced her ventilator, the jury heard.

Child H’s mother said: “It was clear to us that [Child H] improved dramatically almost as soon as she arrived at Arrowe Park. I would say she was like a completely different baby once at Arrowe Park.”

Her husband stated: “She was only there a few days but she was just like a different baby, she was more responsive, she was more with it. She just came on in leaps and bounds.”

A brain scan “fortunately showed no long-term damage” and there had been “no long-term complications whatsoever” for the child, the jury heard.

The jury has previously been told it was a “notable fact” that children made a striking recovery once they had been removed from the Countess of Chester hospital.

Benjamin Myers KC, for Letby, has told jurors that Child H’s unexplained collapses were the result of “sub-optimal care” at the hospital and had “nothing to do” with the defendant.

The trial, which has entered its 12th week, continues.