10-year-old girl awarded £5m for hospital failures
Posted: January 20, 2014
Posted in: Birth Injury Head and Brain Injuries Medical Negligence
10-year-old Louisa Ravouvou, who suffered severe brain damage in 2003 due to hospital failures, has been awarded with £5m in a High Court ruling. Louisa suffered a bleed on her brain when in the womb, which hospital staff failed to treat, resulting in her brain damage. Not long after her birth, hospital staff failed to carry out a blood transfusion: resulting in “catastrophic brain damage”.
Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust both admitted to care failures concerning Louisa Ravouvou. Louisa’s mother had been admitted to the John Radcliffe Hospital for a week in October 2003, but was then transferred to the Great Western Hospital due to a shortage of special care beds at the unit in Oxford. According to the family’s solicitor, medical staff at the John Radcliffe Hospital failed to respond to the baby’s bleed.
Failed to make “appropriate arrangements”
During the week that Louisa’s mother spent at the Great Western, she was informed that the baby was most likely anaemic. However, it was heard that the hospital did not make “appropriate arrangements” for Louisa to have a blood transfusion within half an hour of delivery. Due to this, Louisa collapsed shortly after birth, which led to her “catastrophic brain damage”.
Louisa now has a “much reduced life expectancy” but the settlement allows her to receive the 24-hour care she requires and specialist accommodation.
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