Had she lived, Kate Stanton-Davies would have just turned 13. She should have been a teenager with her whole life before her, yet as it was she survived for only six short hours. The legacy of that brief time is a harrowing report published this week into the failure of maternity services at the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust, where her mother, Rhiannon, gave birth to her.
The senior midwife leading the inquiry, Donna Ockenden, said that after talking to some of the hundreds of bereaved families who gave evidence she would sometimes go home and cry. I did too on reading the report, which concludes that no fewer than 201 babies and nine new mothers who died over a period stretching back to the millennium could or would have lived with better care.
