So the Lucy Letby case has ended and the reporting restrictions have been removed and we can now all know that an NHS nurse has been found guilty of seven murders and six attempted murders of babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Cheshire. The murders and attempted murders took place between 2015 and 2016 and this case is probably the worst example of a serial killing rogue medic since the Harold Shipman case, who killed at a minimum 15 people, which concluded in 2000. The crimes of Letby, at least with regards to the number of babies that she killed or attempted to kill, is certainly worse than that of Beverly Allitt, a previous National Health Service baby killer who in 1993 was gaoled for a minimum term of thirty years for 4 murders, 5 attempted murders and six counts of Grievous Bodily Harm, for attacking babies at the Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire.

With any luck the judge in Letby’s case will impose a whole life tariff prison sentence on Letby and she will spend the rest of her life in gaol because her crimes are so monstrous and inexcusable. Letby deserves the punishment that she’s got coming to her and the opprobrium that will come from other women prisoners who, so I’ve been told, do not like child killers one little bit.

Whilst Letby is likely to spend the remainder of her life incarcerated in gaol and was the sole individual behind these appalling crimes, her actions were inadvertently assisted by shockingly poor NHS management at the Countess of Chester Hospital. According to the BBC the hospital management, cared more about covering their own arses and protecting the hospital’s reputation, that they failed to act on reported suspicions about Letby, silenced concerned doctors and ignored critical reports about Letby from the hospital’s lead consultant at the neonatal unit.

The BBC said:

Hospital bosses failed to investigate allegations against Lucy Letby and tried to silence doctors, the lead consultant at the neonatal unit where she worked has told the BBC.

The hospital also delayed calling the police despite months of warnings that the nurse may have been killing babies.

The unit’s lead consultant Dr Stephen Brearey first raised concerns about Letby in October 2015.

No action was taken and she went on to attack five more babies, killing two.

Failure by NHS managers allowed a murderer to continue operating in the hospital and this failure led to two more deaths from five attacks, attacks that should have been prevented. At the very least the hospital management should have undertaken a proper investigation once it was found that neonatal deaths and collapses nearly always correlated with Letby’s nursing shifts.

Reading the BBC report on this case and what happened prior to Letby being arrested shows a hospital and its management failing to get to grips with a problem despite numerous concerns being voiced to the management by medics who were worried about what was an uptick in neonatal deaths.

The BBC added:

The BBC investigation also found:

• The hospital’s top manager demanded the doctors write an apology to Letby and told them to stop making allegations against her
• Two consultants were ordered to attend mediation with Letby, even though they suspected she was killing babies
• When she was finally moved, Letby was assigned to the risk and patient safety office, where she had access to sensitive documents from the neonatal unit and was in close proximity to senior managers whose job it was to investigate her
• Deaths were not reported appropriately, which meant the high fatality rate could not be picked up by the wider NHS system, a manager who took over after the deaths has told the BBC
• As well as the seven murder convictions, Letby was on duty for another six baby deaths at the hospital – and the police have widened their investigation
• Two babies also died while Letby was working at Liverpool Women’s Hospital

What I see here is a catalogue of failures by hospital management who were more concerned about the hospital’s public image and covering their own arses than the safety of the babies in the hospital’s care.

This is what is laughingly called ‘your’ NHS, the NHS that we are implored to clap for and treat as a national secular religion by NHS supporters and by the Government. It’s a sick joke of a health service where babies are fed into the jaws of a simulacrum of Moloch in order to protect the image of a hospital and the status of its management.

You can clap for the NHS if you want but if you do the remember that you are clapping for an NHS that couldn’t stop a serial killer even though there appear to have been opportunities for them to do so.

Clap? The NHS makes me want to vomit.