Were TWO mums given killer herpes by surgeon?
Families call for an inquest as caesarean links revealed
TWO mothers who died of herpes are feared to have been infected by the same surgeon during caesarean sections at a scandal-hit hospital trust.
Kimberley Sampson, 29, and Samantha Mulcahy, 32, both contracted the same rare strain of the virus within weeks of each other.
Their babies were delivered by emergency caesarean by the same surgeon and midwife. After a BBC investigation into links between the deaths, an expert in sexual health said it was ‘most likely’ they were infected by the surgeon.
East Kent Hospitals Trust had told the families investigations into the deaths in 2018 showed no connections and that the surgeon did not have herpes. A coroner denied their pleas for an inquest.
But Miss Sampson’s family obtained access to emails from Public Health England that showed the private laboratory Micropathology said both cases ‘look like surgical contamination’.
Now the families want the coroner to reconsider examining the deaths.
The revelation comes after the Care Quality Commission prosecuted the trust in the wake of the death of baby Harry Richford in November 2017.
Miss Sampson’s mother Yvette, 52, said: ‘We feel betrayed. They said they would leave no stone unturned but now we find out they have left so many stones unturned. We cannot trust anyone who works at that trust.
‘We need an inquest because one day I am going to have to tell my grandchildren how their mummy died and right now I don’t know the answer to that question.’
Miss Sampson, a barber who lived with her three-year-old daughter at her mother’s home in Whitstable, Kent, went into labour at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital in Margate on May 3, 2018. She sustained injuries in an emergency C-section and needed a blood transfusion.
Her son was safely delivered and she asked to be discharged 48 hours later but she had to call 999 a few days later in extreme pain, unable to walk, sleep or eat.
Doctors thought she had bacterial sepsis so gave her antibiotics and operated, to no avail. A consultant microbiologist then suggested trying the antiviral drug Aciclovir – used to treat herpes infections – but it was too late.
Miss Sampson was transferred to King’s College Hospital in London where she was diagnosed with a catastrophic herpes infection and died on May 22.
Mrs Mulcahy, a nursery nurse who lived with her husband Ryan in Folkestone, Kent, was feared to have pre-eclampsia after an emergency C-section at William Harvey
Hospital in Ashford in July 2018.
As in Miss Sampson’s case, doctors thought Mrs Mulcahy was suffering from bacterial sepsis. She was also given antibiotics.
But after several days in intensive care she died from multi-organ failure. A post-mortem found she died after a ‘disseminated herpes simplex type 1 infection’.
Leading sexual health consultant Peter Greenhouse, who was asked by the BBC to review the cases, said it was ‘most likely’ the surgeon who conducted the caesareans had a herpetic whitlow – a herpes infection on a finger – that ‘seeded the herpes into the abdomen of the women’. He added the surgeon’s gloves may have split during both procedures.
Dr Rebecca Martin, of East Kent Hospitals, said investigations led by the trust and the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch ‘concluded it was not possible to identify the source of either infection’.
She added: ‘The surgeon who performed both caesarean sections did not have any hand lesions that could have caused infection or any history of the virus.
‘Kimberley and Samantha’s treatment was based on the different symptoms showed during their illness. Our thoughts are with their families and we will do all we can to answer their concerns.’
‘We feel betrayed’