AUK-born Indian-origin consultant paediatrician at a hospital in northern England is among those who raised concerns and helped convict a nurse found guilty of killing seven babies by a UK court on Friday.
Dr Ravi Jayaram, from the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, said some of those lives could have been saved if his concerns about former nurse colleague Lucy Letby had been heeded and the police alerted sooner.
Letby, 33, was found guilty of the murder of seven newborn babies and also found guilty of seven counts of attempted murder relating to six other babies by a jury at Manchester Crown Court. She will be sentenced at the same court on Monday.
“I do genuinely believe that there are four or five babies who could be going to school now who aren’t,” Dr Jayaram told ‘ITV News’ in a television interview after the verdict.
He told the channel that consultants first began raising concerns after three babies died in June 2015. As more babies collapsed and died, senior medics like him held several meetings with hospital executives to raise their concerns about Letby.
Eventually, it was in April 2017 that the National Health Service (NHS) trust allowed doctors to meet with a police officer.
“The police, after listening to us for less than 10 minutes, realised that this is something that they had to be involved with. I could have punched the air,” said Dr Jayaram.
Shortly afterwards, an investigation was launched that would lead to Letby’s arrest.
The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told the court that Letby used a variety of methods to secretly attack a total of 13 babies in the neonatal ward at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016.
During her trial, which began in October last year, Manchester Crown Court heard that doctors at the hospital began to notice a significant rise in the number of babies who were dying or were unexpectedly collapsing.
The CPS presented evidence of Letby using various methods to attack babies, including the injection of air and insulin into their bloodstream; the infusion of air into their gastrointestinal tract; force feeding an overdose of milk or fluids; impact-type trauma.