Nine-month-old baby dies after doctors misdiagnosed case of meningitis

[caption id="attachment_5937" align="aligncenter" width="768"] The hospital added it has reviewed the circumstances around the child’s death to ensure similar mistakes are not made in future (Picture: Wales News Service)[/caption] Just hours after doctors cleared the child's parents to bring him home, the child passed away. Medical staff misinterpreted Lucas Thomas Munslow's severe bacterial meningitis as tonsillitis when he was just nine months old. When he started to squint and had a temperature in May 2019, his parents Kimberley and Nathan hurried him to the hospital. The baby's red throat was seen by the Glan Clwyd Hospital's on-call physician in Bodelwyddan, North Wales, who advised the baby's parents to use a throat spray to relieve his symptoms. He was then discharged and taken home, only for his parents to bring him in again the following evening after his condition deteriorated drastically. Coroner John Gittins said during an inquest into Lucas’s death earlier in November that staff at the hospital had shown ‘poor practice’, adding it was ‘probable’ the child could have been saved. The family have since succeeded in bringing a claim of clinical negligence and are understood to have reached a five-figure out-of-court settlement with the hospital. Lucas’s father Nathan has said of the amount paid out: ‘It’s an insult on a baby’s life. His life was worth a lot more than that. The people responsible are still working. It’s not nice. ‘We didn’t want to go backwards and forwards. We’ve been on this for five years now, and it would have just been even more time-consuming. We just wanted closure. ‘We’ve got three kids, so need to make sure they’re OK and have our full attention. We’ve got to concentrate on what we’ve got here now. ‘I don’t want anyone else going through what happened to us.’ The family was represented at the inquest by Gamlins Law. Simon Roberts, head of the firm’s personal injury and clinical negligence division, said: ‘They hope that, by raising the case of Lucas in the way that they have, they can help to prevent similar tragedies occurring in the future.’ The hospital has since said it accepted the coroner’s findings ‘unreservedly’, adding that it has ‘already reviewed the circumstances’ and ‘identified where we can improve our diagnostic procedures in extremely rare cases such as this.’