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Christine Onade (pictured) and Yvonne Musonda-Malata deny the allegations (Picture - PA)
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Midwife Yvonne Musonda-Malata leaves the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) (Picture - PA)
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Yvonne Musonda Malata and Christine Onade
Midwives who were supposed to be looking after a desperately tired mother’s four-day-old baby laid the child on its stomach and left it in a stationery cupboard overnight, a tribunal heard.
Yvonne Musonda-Malata and Christine Onade were found out by nursery nurse Alex Curtis when she went to get an envelope, it was claimed.
‘I saw the baby on its front and went to check if it was breathing,’ Ms Curtis told the tribunal. ‘This was an unusual occurrence. We always lay a baby on its back as there is a risk of cot death.
‘If I took responsibility for a parent’s baby, I would never leave it alone. If I needed to go and do something, I would ask another nurse to look after it.’
Ms Malata, 35, and Ms Onade, 46, were put in charge of the crying baby in April 2011 because its mother needed a sound night’s sleep, the Nursing and Midwifery Council was told.
The pair say, because there was no specific place for its cot, they put it in the entrance of the cupboard and left the door ajar. Rita Skeats – another of the midwives at Queen’s Hospital in Romford, north-east London – cast doubt on the claims against them.
‘Alex Curtis said the baby had vomited all over itself and it was suffocating in an airless cupboard,’ she said. ‘The baby was fast asleep and the sheets were clean. There was no vomit.’
Ms Malata and Ms Onade both deny failing to provide appropriate clinical care. There were no hospital guidelines for caring for newborns when mothers could not look after them, the tribunal in London heard. The case continues.
* Culled from http://metro.co.uk/2013/11/11/midwives-put-newborn-baby-on-its-stomach-in-a-cupboard-4183074/