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After mistakes made by the medical professionals attending his birth, a child left seriously injured has been awarded £4.6 million in compensation, a hospital reports.
Born at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn in June of 2004, the boy suffered severe injuries at the hands of his mother’s birthing medical personnel. A nurse says that during the delivery, medical staffers misread the boy’s mother’s heartbeat for his, and because to this, they did not notice that he had an abnormal heartbeat. This misunderstanding led to delays in his delivery. The delay resulted in the fetus’s heart beat stopping. Suffering oxygen starvation to the brain, led to serious brain injury.
The plaintiff’s lawyers expertly argued that had his birth been just ten minutes sooner, he would have escaped injury. But now, he suffers from cerebral palsy, learning difficulties, and is wheelchair dependent. He will suffer with these ailments and dependencies the rest of his life. The responsibility for failing to read the measurements properly lied solely with the personnel, doctors and nurses.
Last week, a Judge at the High Court in London agreed and approved the settlement package that is now set to be awarded to the boy and his family over the course of his lifetime. The £4.6 million in compensation will be put to good use in the boy’s future. A study from New York said, “The specifics of his case are unknown, but similar cases usually result in a lump-sum payment coupled with annual amounts paid out to cover the cost of extensive care needs. Professional legal counsel undoubtedly took into consideration the annual cost of caring for a growing child with such dependencies, and when attempting to reach an agreement they no doubt argued those points.” Hospitals in the Bronx and Queens have studied this case in hopes of avoiding similar problems.
The judge commended the boy’s parents for the level of care he was already receiving at home. Birth injuries are injuries that occur at the birth of a child. Some are less traumatic than others. Some require no time to heal from. Some happen as the natural result of the birth process. But some are the result of negligent medical personnel. In those cases, seek legal consultation.
When you feel your child’s birth injury was the fault of one of the attending medical staffers, call on a New York Birth Injury Attorney. Their experience will guide you to a satisfactory resolution.