A couple who agreed to a termination after being wrongfully advised their healthy baby boy had a fatal foetal abnormality has said it has taken “years of extraordinary pain and resolve to reach this point”.
In 2019 Rebecca Price and Pat Kiely from Phibsborough in Dublin received a misdiagnosis in the National Maternity Hospital.
In June of 2021 the couple settled their High Court action after the hospital, Merrion Fetal Health Clinic and a Glasgow laboratory admitted full liability in the case of the misdiagnosis of the presence of trisomy 18, an indicator of Edwards Syndrome.
In a statement on Saturday, Health Service Executive chief executive Bernard Gloster said he recently had the opportunity to meet Ms Price and Mr Kiely. He said he offered them a full apology for the “devastating loss” of baby Christopher following their care at the Holles Street hospital.
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While “nobody can undo the harm” the couple have suffered, he said, it is his and the Minister for Health’s “strong view” that they “deserve at least to have this documented” and to have an “unequivocal apology on behalf of the health service”.
Mr Gloster said he updated the couple about his intention to commence an independent external review of their case to understand fully what occurred.
In a statement released on their behalf by solicitor Caoimhe Haughey, the couple said they welcomed the announcement of an independent review and the public apology from Mr Gloster.
“Christopher would now be six years old. It has taken years of extraordinary pain and resolve to reach this point,” they said.
“Our priority has always been to understand how this happened, why it happened and why it seems that established safeguards were not applied to our care.
“Although the National Maternity Hospital admitted full liability in 2021, there has never been an investigation, nor an apology.
“We will continue to engage constructively with the review process, and our hope is that its findings will improve future care. We would also like to acknowledge the engagement of Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill and her colleagues at the Department of Health.”
[ HSE apologises to couple wrongfully advised of fatal foetal abnormalityOpens in new window ]
Speaking on Sunday, Mr Gloster said he was “truly, truly sorry” for the loss of the couple’s son Christopher.
“They will never have him start school, which is what he should have been doing this year,” he told RTÉ Radio 1’s This Week programme. “They have a little boy, Ollie, and Ollie will grow up never knowing his big brother.”
Mr Gloster said he wanted to apologise for the events that lead to “that dreadful outcome for them”. He also apologised for the time it had taken and the type of responsiveness “they’ve received or not received” from various parts of the health service “in seeking to vindicate their story, not just for themselves but for the benefit of others”.
Mr Gloster said the case had to be examined for “a whole variety of reasons” and he was “100 per cent supported” by the Minister for Health in relation to the need for an independent review.
In their settled High Court action, the couple said they were delighted to find themselves expecting their first child on Christmas Eve 2018 with an estimated due date in September 2019.
Ms Price, who was then 38 years old, had a normal ultrasound scan in February 2019 when she was 12 weeks pregnant. A week later she was advised a non-invasive prenatal test, known as a harmony test, was positive for trisomy 18.
Trisomy 18 is a rare chromosomal condition affecting how long a baby may survive, with most babies dying before or shortly after birth.
The case claimed Ms Price underwent a second ultrasound scan, which was also completely normal. She was then advised to undergo chorionic villus sampling, and her samples were sent to the Glasgow laboratory for testing. She was advised a rapid result from the testing found trisomy 18.
During a consultation in March of that year, she was wrongly advised by her consultant on the non-viability of her pregnancy and told her baby had a fatal foetal abnormality. She followed advice to terminate her pregnancy three days later.
The results of a full-cell culture test showed the baby did not have the condition.
