A terrible medical error claimed the life of a newborn baby earlier this month. On October 5, a young woman goes to the maternity ward of the Layné hospital, in Mont-de-Marsan (Landes), tells France 3. She comes to give birth to her first child. Carrier of a streptococcus B, a bacterium which can be found in the vagina or the digestive tract in particular in pregnant women, she required specific care, which was not put in place.
“Good practice in such a case is to give a preventive antibiotic to avoid a maternal-fetal infection, i.e. transmission to the child”, explains Frédéric Pigny, director of the Intercommunal Hospital Center Mont-de-Marsan. – Pays des Sources, in comments relayed by France 3. Unfortunately, when the midwife took charge of this mother, the elements of the file she had did not show this information”.
“Prophylactic antibiotic therapy was not carried out, he continued. And in all likelihood, the child died of an infectious complication, linked to this germ”.
An administrative investigation opened by the ARS
Born the day after her mother was admitted to the maternity ward, then transferred on October 7 to the Bordeaux University Hospital due to a very worrying state of health, the little girl died that same day. In the local newspaper Sud Ouest, the director of the Mont-de-Marsan hospital says that “a malfunction in traceability” would be responsible for this failure.
In question, the existence of two patient follow-up files, one being filled in a specific software for maternity, the other being a “DPI”, a computerized patient file. Here, the mention of streptococcus B was made in only one of the two files. To avoid omissions or confusion, they must be consulted in turn by the caregivers. This was obviously not done at the Mont-de-Marsan hospital. “There should have been a verification of the maternity software to verify that there is a match”, regrets Frédéric Pigny.
Still according to France 3, the Regional Health Agency, quickly alerted, asked for an analysis of the establishment on the course of the facts. “We also asked that a set of documents be given to us, so that we could carry out an on-site check, explains Didier Couteau, the director of the ARS in Landes. Will be checked: the workforce at the time of the tragedy, the organization, all the adverse events that have occurred in the past, so that an analysis of these facts can be made in the coming weeks.