Bereaved mum vows to fight on

Heartbroken mother Marie Ferguson lost nine-year-old only daughter Raychel in June 2001: “She was my only girl; spoilt rotten,” she told the Sentinel yesterday adding that time has not healed the hurt.

Raychel was given the wrong level of fluid required to treat dehydration and died from hyponatraemia - a disturbance caused by a shortage of sodium in the body - in the Royal Victoria Hospital after being treated in Altnagelvin. She died just 14 months after toddler Lucy Crawford died in similar circumstances in Fermanagh.

Today Mrs Ferguson and her husband Ray will travel to Banbridge where a progress meeting will be held by the public inquiry charged with investigating Raychel’s death, and also the deaths of Adam Strain, who died at the age of 4 years in the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children on the 28th of November 1995 and Claire Roberts, who died at the age of 9 years on the 23rd of October 1996 at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, and Conor Mitchell, who died at the age of 15 in 2003.

Mum Marie has vowed to continue her fight but says she will never get over Raychel’s death.

She told the Sentinel : “People have said to me time is a great healer but this is something I’ll never get over.”

“We want to see some progress and someone to be held accountable for what happened. We don’t want to hear what they’ve been doing over the past two years. What about what’s happened to us over the past ten years?” she asked.

Mr John O’Hara QC will preside. He was appointed by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) in 2004 to investigate the circumstances surrounding the four children’s deaths .

The tribunal’s remit is to investigate the care and treatment especially in relation to the management of fluid balance and the choice and administration of intravenous fluids in each case.

It also has scope to examine the actions of the statutory authorities, other organisations and responsible individuals concerned in the procedures, investigations and events which followed the deaths.

Its terms of reference were significantly altered by the Health Minister Michael McGimpsey in November 2008 to exclude any inquiry into the events surrounding and following the death of Lucy Crawford in 2000 despite this occurring just 14 months before Raychel’s death.

Mr O’Hara subsequently decided that “the terms still permit and indeed require an investigation into the events which followed Lucy’s death such as the failure to identify the correct cause of death ...

“This reflects the contention that had the circumstances of Lucy’s death been identified correctly, and had lessons been learned from the way in which fluids were administered to her, defective fluid management would not have occurred so soon afterwards (only 14 months later) in Altnagelvin, a hospital within the same Western Health and Social Services Board area.”

The purpose of today’s hearing is to provide an update on Inquiry progress and to propose a schedule for the oral hearings.

Mrs Ferguson told the Sentinel she has been frustrated at the slow progress to date. This summer a decade will have passed since Raychel was taken from her family.

She believes a police investigation into her death provided no answers and wrote to Mr O’Hara in January to find ut what progress has been made with the public inquiry since its last progress hearing in May 2008.

Mrs Ferguson said it was extremely painful to have had to wait so long for answers and accountability and vowed: “My weans were weans when it happened and now they are teenagers and we’re still waiting. People have said to me time is a great healer but this is something I’ll never get over.

“I’m not going to give up until someone is held accountable.”