Parents of toddler who died from flu after hospital failings speak out on five-year wait for answers
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Bereaved parents of a toddler who died from the flu after a “catalogue of failings” by a hospital say they are still waiting on answers over their daughter’s tragic death.
Cristiana Banciu died in January 2020 after a rare reaction to the flu while under the care of King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
In 2021, an inquest identified multiple failings by trust staff who “failed to provide basic medical attention” to the two-year-old.
Three years later the trust agreed to pay her parents Alexandru and Georgiana £25,000 following a civil claim for bereavement costs and to cover Cristiana’s funeral expenses.
However, the couple say the trust has not admitted legal liability or sent a formal apology directly to them – an apology has only come via the media.
The parents want reassurance such a tragic incident will not happen again.
Mr Banciu, 37, said: “Losing Cristiana is a nightmare from which we will never wake up. Nothing will bring her back, but we just want those who were at fault to admit it and say they are sorry.
“We have never cared about the money – no amount could replace our beautiful girl – but we wanted answers and a promise that lessons would be learned so it didn’t happen to anyone else.
“What we are going through, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. You go to sleep hoping that everything that happened was just a nightmare and you wake up the next morning and it’s not. But the hope never goes away.
“Life was beautiful when Cristiana was here, but I feel like part of us died with her. A light went out. We do not live; we just survive until the day that we can all be together again.”
Mr Banciu, who was once a head chef but now works as a cleaner alongside his 33-year-old partner, said after losing their daughter, he could no longer cope with the pressures of his former job.
At Cristiana’s inquest, assistant coroner Jacqueline Devonish said healthcare professionals “failed to provide basic medical attention”, which contributed to her death. The coroner could not, on the balance of probabilities, say that she would have survived had she been treated sooner but she would probably have had a better chance, describing failure to record the GCS as “very serious”.
On 6 January 2020, Cristiana was admitted to the Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH) in Orpington just two days before she died. She had been highlighted as a patient of concern “multiple times” while in hospital.
Cristiana was then transferred to King’s College Hospital in Demark Hill, where she died on 8 January. An investigation by the King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust found there was a failure to adequately monitor the toddler on the ward at PRUH, a failure to detect her declining neurological condition, and a failure to act on her low Glasgow Coma Score (GCS).
The GCS is used to describe the extent of impaired consciousness in all types of acute medical and trauma patients, and assesses people according to three aspects of responsiveness: eye-opening, motor, and verbal responses.
Both hospitals are part of King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
Jodi Newton, a specialist medical negligence solicitor and partner at Osbornes Law, said: “My clients’ lives have been torn apart by the unimaginable pain of losing their only child and all they have ever wanted is for those who were at fault to say sorry.
“Instead, they have been forced to endure years of unnecessary and prolonged litigation and there is still no apology from the trust, even after the multiple failings identified at the inquest and support from eminent independent experts with whom we consulted and who confirmed they considered the trust to be liable.
“The family sought to resolve the case nearly 12 months prior to it finally settling but were ignored and rebuffed and it was not until court proceedings were served that the trust appeared to take their case seriously.”
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said in a statement to The Independent: “We would like to apologise to Cristiana’s family for the failings in care during her treatment at King’s, and we are deeply sorry to the Banciu family for their loss.
“We have made a number of changes since Cristiana was treated at King’s in 2020, all of which are focussed on improving the care we provide for patients treated across our hospitals.”
