At least three families have sought advice from Maurice Blackburn lawyers in relation to the deaths of seven babies at Bacchus Marsh and Melton Regional Hospital in 2013-14.
The law firm is representing the family of a baby born at the hospital in 2013, who suffered a hypoxic brain injury during birth and was left with brain damage.
Maurice Blackburn principal and medical law expert Dimitra Dubrow said they would be “shortly” issuing a Supreme Court order on behalf of the family.
Ms Dubrow said the apparent inability of staff to interpret foetal heart rates and the hospital’s alleged refusal to transfer a mother and her baby to another hospital following “complex” delivery, were among the pressing issues among all three clients.
Ms Dubrow said families who had “sought to come to terms” with the death of their babies were now forced to relive those memories.
“You can imagine the natural shock parents would feel to receive this kind of information,” Ms Dubrow said.
“Losing a child is a painful loss and now these parents have to live that all over again. We welcome the transparency and openness the [Health] Minister shared this morning.
“It’s important we go further and find out why these issues occurred and why the health service catastrophically let these families down.”
Ms Dubrow said while a class action was unlikely, there was a “cluster of concerning issues”, and the families were seeking legal advice and considering what their options were.
Reliving the pain
The families were unaware their children’s deaths were being investigated by the Health Department, Ms Dubrow said.
One of the mothers, who is seeking legal advice from Maurice Blackburn, said: “I feel absolutely devastated about this news. I had got to a point where I thought I could move on after years of questioning and now it’s taken me right back.”
Members of another family said they couldn’t help but feel “angry”.
“This has been a very upsetting week. We have been trying to move on and we now can’t help but feel angry because we now know that there could have been a different outcome.”
Meanwhile, Slater and Gordon, who are representing a family whose baby suffered injuries at the hospital, are probing whether or not injuries suffered by their current or former clients’ babies born at the hospital could be linked to Friday morning’s revelations.
“Where key failings have caused the avoidable deaths of babies, there is also the potential for life-changing complications for other children who survived,” she said.
“My concern is that this is only the tip of the iceberg and I urge anyone who thinks they may have been affected to come forward to help ensure this does not happen again.”
