Inquiry finds death of newborn at Glasgow hospital could not have been avoided

The death of a newborn baby at Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Children could not have reasonably been avoided, an inquiry has found.

Tragic Sophia Evangeline Smith died in the hospital’s neo-natal intensive care unit aged just 12 days on April 11, 2017. Desperately ill Sophia was born at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley on March 31, 2017.

Two days after her birth, she was transferred to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) campus in Govan after experiencing breathing difficulties. On April 10, she suffered a pulmonary haemorrhage, or bleeding on the lungs, and died in her mother’s arms the following morning.

A post-mortem examination found that Sophia had an active blood stream infection caused by methicillin sensitive Staphylococcus aureus, which a Sheriff found “pla