Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse in a UK hospital, was found guilty of killing seven babies and trying to kill six others. Dr Ravi Jayaram, an Indian-origin consultant paediatrician, was among those who raised concerns and helped convict the nurse on Friday. Read more about the killer nurse HERE.
UK-born Dr Jayaram, from the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northern England, said some of those babies would be alive now if his concerns were taken seriously. “I do genuinely believe that there are four or five babies who could be going to school now who aren't," he told ITV News' in a television interview after the verdict.
Dr Jayaram said concerns were first raised when three babies died in June 2015. After more babies died, senior doctors, including him, alerted hospital executives about Letby's behaviour.
He claimed the hospital bosses asked him to 'draw a line' under his suspicions and apologise to Letby for alleged 'victimisation' in a mediation meeting. In April 2017, the National Health Service (NHS) trust let doctors talk to a police officer.
"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," said Dr Jayaram. Following this, a probe was launched into the mysterious deaths and Letby was arrested in July 2018 and charged in November 2020.
Who is Dr Ravi Jayaram?
Dr Jayaram is a Consultant Paediatrician at the Countess of Chester Hospital. He co-hosted Channel 4 series 'Born Naughty?' and was featured on Channel 4 show 'How To Stay Well'. He was also a guest on BBC's 'The One Show'. He describes himself as “a mediocre triathlete and wannabe rockstar”.
In a Facebook post on Friday, he wrote, “Many of you are aware that due to the Lucy Letby trial, I have mostly been absent from social media over the last few months. My heart goes out to the families of the babies affected by this although nothing can ever undo the evil that was inflicted on their children. My colleagues and I have lived this for the last eight years and the period of the trial has been the most difficult part of this.
“There are bad people in all walks of life and many of them are very good at hiding in plain sight. There are also people in highly paid positions of responsibility in healthcare whose job it is to ensure patient safety,” he said, pointing out that he is relieved that the "often-maligned" criminal justice system has worked properly this time.
Dr Jayaram said, “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.
“The truth of what happened during that time will shock you to the core as it comes out. The safety of patients should come above any risk of reputational damage and sometimes the right decisions might be difficult and unpopular, but executive level managers are paid to do just that. 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. However, I suspect the response will be fudge and misinformation,” he said, adding that it is now his mission to make sure that they are held to account.
Dr Jayaram said there is a long history of whistleblowers who raise concerns in the NHS not only being ignored but then being portrayed as the problem, sometimes to the point of their careers being destroyed. “What happened here was history repeating itself but the patient safety issue that was ignored was beyond anything that the NHS has tried previously to cover up. There needs to be fundamental change in the culture and governance of NHS institutions and it should start right now.”
Lucy Letby's conviction
The UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told the court that Letby deliberately harmed the 13 newborn infants in various ways in the neonatal ward at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016.
Letby was accused of injecting air into their bloodstreams and administering air or milk into their stomachs via nasogastric tubes. She was also accused of poisoning infants by adding insulin to intravenous feeds and interfering with breathing tubes.
She was convicted of murdering seven babies and of seven counts of attempted murder relating to six other babies.
The nurse was found “not guilty” of two charges of attempted murder. The jury was unable to reach verdicts on six further counts of attempted murder. The Manchester Crown Court will sentence her on Monday, August 21.