'My entire career has been a mission to keep my promise to baby Gina'

MATERNITY review head Donna Ockenden has revealed the tragic moment that motivated her mission to improve services.

- By ZENA HAWLEY

Appearing as a castaway on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, she revealed to presenter Lauren Laverne that it was the death of a baby called Gina at the start of her career that has driven her work. She calls it “the Gina promise”.

She said: “I came on to my shift one evening and was told that a baby called Gina, who had been born at another hospital, was expected to die that evening. I volunteered to help her parents through that time. I just wanted to help and we bathed and dressed Gina and then she died. Her parents made me promise to take her to the mortuary.

“I found an empty room and I sat and held her and I was so angry on her behalf and her mother's behalf because she shouldn't have died and the family had been let down.

“I thought ‘that’s it - I must leave midwifery’.