13 April 2018
Sri Lankan wins lawsuit against NHS as
midwives fail to explain why she needed to feed her son due to language barrier
A Sri Lankan refugee who
could not speak English has won a legal battle against the NHS after her child
was brain damaged after hospital staff did not explain the importance of
feeding a newborn.
Nilujan Rajatheepan was in
good condition when he was delivered by caesarean section at King George
Hospital in Goodmayes, Essex in July 2009.
His parents are Tamil
refugees from Sri Lanka and his mother, Sinthiya, was 21 when Nilujan
was born and spoke only very few words of English.
When the community midwife
visited the family at home after the birth, Nilujan was pale and lethargic,
having not been fed for more than 15 hours.
His hypoglycemic state
resulted in catastrophic brain injuries. Nilujan, now eight, has cerebral
palsy with severely impaired physical and cognitive function.
On Friday in London, Judge
McKenna ruled that Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Foundation Trust was
liable.
He ruled midwives failed to
hire an interpreter to tell her to feed her baby and the eight-year-old is now
in line for multi-million-pound NHS compensation because midwives were
negligent in failing to tackle the language barrier.
Judge McKenna said
medics at King George's Hospital ended up "effectively ignoring"
Sinthiya Rajatheepan's concerns about her crying baby.
Because she only knew a few
basic words of English, she was never given proper instructions about how to
feed her son.
The mother and baby were
discharged home too early and, due to poor feeding, Nilujan suffered
irreversible brain damage, the judge added.
Mrs Rajatheepan, 29, and
her husband Sivarajah, came to Britain from their native Sir Lanka as refugees
in 2008.
The judge said the young
mother was "certainly unable to understand anything but the simplest of
instructions" and only when accompanied by hand gestures.
He added the brain damage
he suffered was "caused as a result of poor feeding".
Midwives were adamant that
they were well used to patients with language difficulties and had properly
instructed Mrs Rajatheepan how to feed her baby.
But the judge said:
"The overwhelming weight of the evidence is that Mrs Rajatheepan had very
little ability with the English language.
"She was certainly
unable to understand anything but the simplest of instructions and only then
when accompanied with appropriate hand gestures."
He added: "The sad
reality is that Mrs Rajatheepan did not, in fact, ever get any instruction on
how to feed properly.
"Still less did she
receive any instruction on what to look out for and what to do if feeding was
unsuccessful".
The King George Hospital in
Barley Lane, Goodmayes, Essex, where the Sri Lankan family were given medical
attention
Because of the language
barrier, she "did not and could not reasonably have been expected to have
understood" the advice she was given.
She was anxious that
Nilujan was "crying continuously", but the judge said: "Her
attempts to draw attention to her concern in this regard were effectively
ignored."
The ward was busy and Mrs
Rajatheepan, of Lavender Place, Ilford, had "a propensity simply to smile
at people when she caught their eye."
She had, "albeit
timidly", approached the midwive's station in a bid to draw attention to
her concerns, but the judge said she was "ignored".
Midwives had given her
"false reassurance" by "repeating the mantra that it is
perfectly normal for new born baby's to cry."
The hospital's midwifery
team should have contacted the NHS "language line" for help, or
called for an interpreter, he ruled.
The judge added: "The
reality is that no one ever in fact gave Mrs Rajatheepan a clear and
understandable explanation of the importance of feeding.
"Because of the
language barrier, she had been unable to communicate her concerns to hospital
staff."
The end result was that Mrs
Rajatheepan was discharged home too early and, had she been kept in hospital
overnight, Nilujan would have escaped injury.
"In the circumstances,
I would enter judgment in favour of the claimant with damages to be
assessed," the judge concluded.
Nilujan's NHS compensation
award has yet to be assessed, but is likely to be a multi-million-pound sum,
given the extent of his disabilities.
Wendy Matthews, director of
midwifery, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, said
later: "We would like to say sorry again to Nilujan and the Rajatheepan
family and express our sincere sympathies to them.
"We are considering
the judgment and the implications of the judge's ruling in this case.
"Although we have made
huge improvements since this incident occurred in 2009, we will take the
opportunity to review it closely and see if there are any more lessons about
our post-natal care that we can learn."
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