Disabled showjumper sues GP who ‘didn’t give mum folic acid’
Teen who met Meghan says doctor caused her spina bifida
A SHOWJUMPER with spina bifida has launched a landmark case against a GP, claiming he failed to tell her mother to take folic acid before getting pregnant.
Evie Toombes, 19, a disability campaigner who has met Meghan and Harry, has very limited mobility and has to be fed through a tube.
She claims Dr Philip Mitchell failed to advise her mother to increase her folic acid intake before she was born and her disabilities are a result of his negligence.
Miss Toombes is bringing the claim involving her ‘wrongful conception and birth’ at the High Court. Her form of spina bifida affects the nerves to her legs, bladder and bowel and she has needed a feeding tube for the past three years.
But Miss Toombes – who hopes to one day represent Great Britain at the Paralympics – said her motto was ‘find a way, not an excuse’. After watching her mother, Caroline, compete as a showjumper she started riding from the age of five on her horse, Daisy. ‘With my legs not working, Daisy practically becomes my legs and I get that freedom that is impossible to feel on my own,’ she said.
Miss Toombes, the youngest person in the UK to register as a junior para rider, said: ‘I had no school friends because I’d missed so much time [in class]. I went to horses for comfort and a pick-me-up.
‘I wanted something that gave me value, that I could enjoy, that made all the months in hospital worthwhile.’
She told how her condition means she has hours of treatment every day.
‘ I catheterise every three hours, wear night splints and do two hours of physio a day. I’m attached to tubes for sometimes 24 hours a day. If I’m riding, it’s 23 hours, and I’m no longer a patient for those 60 minutes,’ she said.
Since the age of 13 she has given talks to primary school children on hidden disabilities, and in 2018 she met the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at a WellChild charity event.
She spoke to Harry, who has been patron of the charity since 2007, again this month on a video call. At the High Court, she claimed her mother would have started taking folic acid, delayed conception and had a ‘genetically different’ child without disabilities were it not for the doctor’s alleged negligence.
Women are advised to take 400 microgrammes of folic acid – the man-made version of the vitamin folate – every day for at least a month before conception and up to the 12th week of pregnancy. A lack of it increases the risk of an unborn child developing spina bifida. It comes as tablets or a liquid, helps the body make healthy red blood cells and is found in certain foods. The court heard that before conception, Miss Toombes’s mother attended a family planning appointment with Dr Mitchell.
At the time, it was standard practice for GPs to advise prospective mothers of the potential benefits of taking sufficient folic acid before conception and during the first trimester.
The court heard Dr Mitchell told Miss Toombes’s mother taking folic acid was optional.
He did not warn her of any association between folic acid and the prevention of spina bifida or prescribe her folic acid supplements, it is alleged. Conceived shortly afterwards, Miss Toombes was born in 2001 and diagnosed with a lipomy-lomeningocoele, a neural defect leading to permanent disability.
Miss Tombes, from Skegness in Lincolnshire, claims the GP’s failure to advise her mother to take folic acid and to prescribe it was a breach of the duty of care. She pointed out she has a younger sibling without congenital defects.
Dr Mitchell, who worked at the Hawthorn Medical Practice in Skegness, has ‘comprehensively disputed’ the claims. On Monday, High Court judge Mrs Justice Lambert ruled the case could go ahead. It will come back to court next year.
‘I went to horses for comfort’