The bereaved parents of three babies who died after being given contaminated feed while in hospital have insisted justice has not yet been served after the pharmaceutical company that supplied the batches was fined £1.2m.
Relatives of the children, who were among 19 infected with Bacillus Cereus bacteraemia at nine hospitals in England, said the fine would be a drop in the ocean to ITH Pharma, which they accused of carrying on as normal.
Yousef Al-Kharboush was nine days old when he died at St Thomas’ hospital in central London on 1 June 2014, having developed sepsis. He and his twin brother, Abdulilah, were born by emergency caesarean section at St Thomas’ at 32 weeks’ gestation in May 2014. While in intensive care they were both fed intravenously. While Abdulilah was not affected, Yousef died.
Tameria Aldrich, whose twin sister Tia also survived, died nine days after Yousef after being transferred to St Thomas’ from Broomfield hospital in Chelmsford, while Oscar Barker died at Rosie maternity hospital in Cambridge.
The 19 children who were infected were all given ITH Pharma’s total parenteral nutrition (TPN) between 27 May and 2 June 2014 as nutrition directly into their bloodstream because they were unable to feed on their own.
Prosecutors claimed ITH Pharma’s failure to carry out a proper risk assessment resulted in the death of Yousef, though TPN was not alleged to have caused the deaths of the other two babies.
On Friday, judge Deborah Taylor at Southwark crown court ordered the firm, which had a £66.8m annual turnover up to September 2020, to pay a fine of £1.215m and costs of £291,000 after it previously pleaded guilty to three offences.
But she said: “I did not find the causation of Yousef’s death is proved to the criminal standard.” She added that, for legal purposes, the bacteraemia had not necessarily caused actual harm, but the company’s processes risked “serious harm and or death”.
Raaid Sakkijha, Yousef’s father, said: “The terrible memories still haunt us and will do for ever.” He added that Yousef’s mother Ghada Sakkijha “feels the weight of the loss of her son” every time she looks at their surviving child. “This company that did this to us won’t even feel the fine. It’s business as usual for them. Is that justice?”
Arti Shah, a medical negligence solicitor at Fieldfisher, the firm representing the families of Yousef, Tameria and Oscar in civil proceedings, said: “For eight years, ITH Pharma has continued operating as normal. For eight years, Yousef’s parents have lived in hell. And still the company has not admitted causing Yousef’s death.”
Tameria’s mother, Vicki Golden, and Oscar’s mother, Holly Barker, wept as the sentence was passed.
An ITH Pharma spokesman said: “We at ITH Pharma, first and foremost, offer our deepest sympathies to the families of the patients affected by the events of eight years ago.
“We accept the fine imposed by the court, having pleaded guilty to a single regulatory offence of failing to have a suitable and sufficient risk assessment, under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, and to two regulatory offences under the Medicines Act 1968 of supplying a medicinal product on 27 May 2014 not of the nature or quality specified in the prescription.
“ITH Pharma has been a leading manufacturer of total parenteral nutrition (TPN) and other medicinal products for many years and the events of 27 May 2014 were wholly exceptional.”
