Doctor who helped catch Letby says lives could've been saved

ODN

The doctor who helped catch child killer Lucy Letby has told ITV News that babies' lives could have been saved if hospital bosses had contacted police sooner.  Dr Ravi Jayaram, who is a consultant paediatrician at the Countess of Chester Hospital, says he repeatedly raised concerns about his former colleague months before police were alerted.   In an exclusive interview, he has detailed to ITV News how executives at the top of the organisation at the time told him to “draw a line” under his suspicions and to apologise to Lucy Letby for his accusations.  Report by Czubalam. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

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00:00 I've been a paediatrician since 1992 and I had never in my career seen anything like this.

00:08 And actually initially there was a feeling of thank goodness Lucy was on because she's really good in a crisis,

00:14 she's really good at managing these things.

00:16 But as time progressed the thought started springing into our heads,

00:20 could she be doing something deliberately?

00:22 So the thought starts sinking in that there could be a killer on the unit.

00:29 I mean that's a big moment.

00:31 It's a big moment and it's a chilling moment.

00:35 I don't think anybody has a rule book for how you deal with a situation

00:40 where you're suspecting that somebody's causing deliberate harm to babies on your neonatal unit.

00:45 Tell me about the night when you walked in on Lucy Letby standing over the cot of baby Kay.

00:51 That is a night that is etched on my memory and will be in my nightmares forever to be honest.

01:00 I was sitting at the desk just outside the room writing notes

01:04 and the nurse looking after the baby said she was popping to the delivery suite to go and talk to the parents

01:09 and she said I've left Lucy in there babysitting.

01:11 Part of me was saying you better go in and just check everything's okay

01:15 because you know what's happened before when Lucy's been on duty.

01:19 As I walked towards the incubator I could see on the monitors that the oxygen saturations

01:25 which is basically the baby's oxygen levels were dropping

01:28 and they dropped to a level that ordinarily number one the alarms would have been going off

01:35 but number two the nurse would have called for help

01:39 and Lucy Letby was standing by the top of the incubator.

01:42 She didn't have her hands in the incubator.

01:44 What was she doing then?

01:45 Well she was just standing there.

01:47 Now tubes become dislodged but this was a 25 week gestation baby

01:53 who wasn't kicking around, who wasn't vigorous.

01:56 The only possibility was that that tube had to have been dislodged deliberately.

02:01 Do you think the lives of some of those babies could have been saved if management had taken action sooner?

02:08 It's a horrible thing to say

02:11 but I do genuinely believe that there are four or five babies who could be going to school now who aren't.

02:19 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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