Lucy Letby, a 33 -year-old neonatal nurse in the United Kingdom, has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others at the hospital where she worked. Dr Ravi Jayaram, an Indian-origin consultant paediatrician, was among those who raised concerns and helped convict the British nurse. He says that some of the babies could've been saved if his concerns regarding Ms Letby had been heeded sooner.
In a Facebook post on Friday, Dr Jayaram said that the truth of what happened "will shock you to the core as it comes out".
In an interaction with ITV News, the Indin-origin doctor said that the first concerns by him were raised in 2015 after the death of three babies and with more babies dying senior medics like him held various meetings with the hospital to raise concerns about Ms Letby. It was in 2017 that National Health Service (NHS) trust allowed doctors to meet police officers in the case.
"The police, after listening to us for less than 10 minutes, realised that this is something that they had to be involved with. I could have punched the air," Dr Jayaram told the channel.
Now, in a Facebook post, Dr Jayaram noted that there are still people out there who need to stand up in public to explain why they did not want to listen and do the right thing. He wrote that these people, who are still earning six-figure sums of tax-payers money or retired with their gold-plated pension, need to acknowledge that their actional potentially facilitated a "mass-murder".
"I am relieved that the often-maligned criminal justice system has worked properly this time. However, there are things that need to come out about why it took several months from concerns being raised to the top brass before any action was taken to protect babies, and why from that time it then took almost a year for those highly paid senior managers to allow the police to be involved," Dr Jayaram wrote.
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"The truth of what happened during that time will shock you to the core as it comes out," he said, adding, "There are people out there now, still earning six figure sums of tax-payers money or retired with their gold-plated pensions, who need to stand up in public to explain why they did not want to listen and do the right thing, to acknowledge that their actions potentially facilitated a mass-murderer and to apologise to the families involved in all of this".
Further, Dr Jayram concluded his social media post by saying that the patient safety issue that was ignored in Ms Letby's case was "beyond anything that the NHS has tried previously to cover up". "There needs to be a fundamental change in the culture and governance of NHS institutions and it should start right now," Dr Jayaram wrote.
Lucy Letby was arrested in 2018 and charged in 2020. Her trial began in October last year and she was found guilty of the murder of seven newborn babies and the attempted murder of six others by a jury at Manchester Crown Court on Friday.
Her sentence will be pronounced on Monday.
