Baby death investigation exposes 19-year cover-up of care errors

HEALTH authorities covered up failings that led to a baby’s death and should be investigated by the police, an inquiry has found after 19 years.

A string of errors was made by the care organisations that looked after Elizabeth Dixon between her birth in December 2000 and her death, just days shy of her first birthday.

Her parents spent nearly two decades campaigning to uncover how she died after several inquiries, including by police and by Parliament, faltered and an inquest failed to call key witnesses.

An independent inquiry was set up into the baby’s death in 2015 by Jeremy Hunt, the then health secretary, headed by Dr Bill Kirkup, a former assistant chief medical officer for England.

Yesterday, he delivered the excoriating findings of his investigation, which said: “Elizabeth’s profound disability and death could have been avoided had basic clinical principles been followed.”

It concluded: “There were failures of care by every organisation that looked after her, none of which was admitted at the time, nor properly investigated.”

Instead, Dr Kirkup said, “a cover-up began on the day that she died”.

Dr Kirkup called for the Independent Office of Police Conduct to examine how Elizabeth’s case was handled.

Last night, her parents, Graeme and Anne Dixon, from Church Crookham, Hampshire, welcomed the findings, saying: “We cling to the hope Dr Kirkup’s report will do enough to ensure that lessons are genuinely learnt and that these are put into practice and that there is an honest and robust commitment, set out in law, that there is no longer a place for deception or dishonesty by the professionals and organisations we all place our trust in.”

Elizabeth was born prematurely at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey, where staff failed to diagnose the high blood pressure caused by a non-fatal form of a rare cancer in her abdomen.