A baby girl died of an overdose after her mother was given the wrong prescription, an inquest has heard.
Four-month-old Abbie Jones received ten times the dose she was meant to have after her mother Maxine Winfield, 30, was supplied with a wrongly-labelled medicine bottle.
Ms Winfield unwittingly gave the baby at least two doses of the medicine and the baby received another two doses in hospital before the mistake was realised.
The child, who was born with Down’s syndrome and a hole-in-the-heart, became seriously ill and was admitted to Sheffield Children’s Hospital suffering from dehydration and septic shock on May 1, 2006, but died on June 3.
Sheffield coroner Chris Dorries told the inquest Abbie received ‘an inappropriate amount of medication’ before she was admitted to hospital.
The inquest which has been running for three weeks heard pharmacist Jeremy Power issued a prescription for ten times the normal dose of the diuretic Furosemide.
The bottle was wrongly-labelled to give doses of 5mls twice a day, when Abbie should have been given 0.5mls of the concentrated liquid.
Mr Power told the hearing he overheard his technician querying the dosage over the telephone with the surgery treating the baby, but admitted he did not check to see if the technician had spoken to a doctor.
‘With hindsight I wish I had,’ said Mr Power. ‘I accept a stronger intervention should have been made.’
He was asked by Mr Dorries: ‘Was it not a major warning bell that all was not right here? This was not a child with real impairment.’
Mr Power said he did not realise at the time but admitted the information could have been checked on medical records.
The inquest heard how a receptionist at the GP’s surgery had wrongly made out a prescription for the drug after Abbie’s mother rang the surgery.
She put incorrect information into a computer which printed the prescription and overrode a safety warning which flagged up if too much medicine was being prescribed.
It was presented to the doctor as a repeat prescription and the error was not picked up.
At the start of the hearing, Miss Winfield, of Barnsley broke down in tears in the witness box as she insisted she would not have given her daughter the wrong dose.
After Abbie’s death a police investigation was launched and Miss Winfield and the baby’s father Neil Jones were driven from their home by a hate mob.
The house was trashed and all the dead baby’s clothes, toys, jewellery and teddy bears were stolen, even the bootees she was wearing when she died.
Following Abbie’s death, heartbroken Mr Jones took an overdose and died.
Abbie was prescribed medicines including Furosemide after she had problems with breathing and keeping her feed down.
The inquest heard Miss Winfield, a mother-of-four, kept bottles of different medication for Abbie at her former home.
Furosemide was prescribed when Abbie was four weeks old in two daily doses of 5ml, but this was later changed to a mixture ten times stronger when Miss Winfield complained the baby was struggling to accept the fluid.
The concentrated version was supposed to be given to the baby in smaller amounts of 0.5ml twice a day.
Smaller ‘wrongly labelled’ 30ml bottles were delivered to her home instead of the usual large 150ml bottles, but confusingly the mother says she never used them.
Asked by the coroner if she might have used one of the smaller bottles and forgotten to give Abbie one-tenth of the previous medication she replied: ‘No. Not at all. I always check the labels.’
‘There was no way I would have given Abbie a big dose from a small bottle.’
However the inquest is still trying to determine how the baby ended up taking the fatal dosage.
Former forensic pathologist Professor Christopher Milroy told the hearing that the incorrect dose could have caused the baby’ death and certainly contributed to it.
He said: ‘Even if there was an infection I would still say the Furosemide was an important factor in this child’s death.’
The hearing continues.
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