The parents of a baby girl who suffered brain damage during birth have been awarded a payout of £6.3 million at the High court. The incident occurred at a hospital in Hertfordshire in November 2002, where Ellie Matraves was born clinically dead after being deprived of oxygen after a failure by staff at Lister hospital.
According to an article on the BBC News website, medical staff needed to perform hours of resuscitation to revive Ellie and although they were able to do so she suffered serious medical injury as a result.
Ellie, who is now 6, has cerebral palsy and functions at a level three years below her age. She now requires 24 hour care.
The payment to Ellie’s parents was awarded by Mr Justice Jack in the High court and consists of a £2.4 million lump sum and annual payouts for the rest of Ellie’s life.
It is very difficult not to feel for a family which has had their world turned upside down by a basic error from what are supposed to be trained medical professionals. Every parent hopes that their child is brought in to the world healthy and was the responsibility of medical professionals in this case to monitor the baby and make sure it was not in distress.
It may seem like a very large payout to some but cerebral palsy, which causes amongst other things speech and language disorders and motor dysfunction, is not a condition which tends to lower life expectancy. This means that Ellie could require care and assistance for 70 years plus due to the injuries that she has suffered through no fault of her own.
Mr Matthew Jackson apologised to Ellie and the parents on behalf of the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, who admitted liability for the incident.
Despite the payout, Mr and Mrs Matraves were keen to stress the damage caused by the event to the lives of Ellie and her family and stated “We feel it is important for people to understand that if it hadn’t been for the hospital’s appalling negligence, our daughter would have been born a healthy non-disabled baby girl”.
