Trust admits contaminated feed caused baby's death after denials

An NHS trust has admitted a highly vulnerable baby died because of a contaminated feed it gave her, after denying that for more than a decade.

- Denis Campbell

At an inquest yesterday, Guy's and St Thomas' trust (GSTT) said it had given Aviva Otte a nutritional product containing deadly bacteria in January 2014. It had previously insisted to her mother, a coroner and the Guardian on multiple occasions that she had died of natural causes.

The change in GSTT's explanation of Aviva's death came during the second day of an inquest into her death and the deaths of two other babies in a separate outbreak of Bacillus cereus five months later.

Giving evidence at Southwark coroner's court in London, Dr Grenville Fox - a senior consultant neonatologist who worked in the neonatal unit where Aviva was treated - said that it is now his opinion that the parenteral nutrition (PN) she received was the main cause of her death.