{"id":60916,"date":"2025-08-14T14:45:46","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T14:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/mother-loses-high-court-challenge-over-death\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T14:45:47","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T14:45:47","slug":"mother-loses-high-court-challenge-over-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/mother-loses-high-court-challenge-over-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother loses High Court challenge over death"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"PacemakerPacemaker<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Raychel Ferguson was nine when she died in the Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The mother of a nine-year-old girl who died from hyponatraemia has lost a legal challenge to her condition not being formally recorded at inquest as “hospital-acquired”.<\/p>\n

Raychel Ferguson, from Londonderry, was given a lethal dose of an intravenous fluid at Altnagelvin Hospital in 2001 after having her appendix removed and died later at the Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children<\/p>\n

A second inquest in December 2023<\/a> found that she had died of a cerebral oedema, or swelling in the brain, due to hyponatraemia, an abnormally low level of sodium in blood.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the Hyponatraemia Inquiry, which examined the hospital deaths of five children in Northern Ireland, found Raychel’s death was avoidable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"LiamLiam McBurney<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Raychel’s mother, Marie Ferguson, pictured after the previous inquest in December 2023<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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At the previous inquest in December 2023<\/a>, Coroner Joe McCrisken said her death was due to a series of human errors and not systemic failure.<\/p>\n

He outlined three causes of the hyponatraemia but said he was satisfied the “inappropriate infusion of hypotonic saline fluid… played the most significant part”.<\/p>\n

Hyponatraemia is the term for a low level of sodium in the bloodstream, which causes the brain cells to swell with too much water.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Raychel’s mother Marie mounted a legal challenge to how the coroner had recorded the cause of her daughter’s death, but that was dismissed on Thursday.<\/p>\n

She objected to the verdict not formally stating that the hyponatraemia was “hospital-acquired” and for not describing her daughter’s vomiting as “severe and profuse”.<\/p>\n

At the high court in Belfast on Thursday, a judge held that the coroner’s inquest conclusions made it abundantly clear that Raychel’s hyponatraemia was acquired when she was in hospital.<\/p>\n

“The detailed findings of the coroner are contained within a comprehensive and detailed verdict which is there for all to read,” Mr Justice Kinney said.<\/p>\n

“There is no basis to say that it was irrational not to include such qualifying words in the cause of death.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Further claims of a failure to properly describe the extent of vomiting were also rejected.<\/p>\n

“The coroner did not discount or disregard the severity of Raychel’s vomiting \u2026 but clearly concluded that it was not relevant to his statutory task and was not a causative factor of the hyponatraemia,” Mr Justice Kinney said.<\/p>\n

“In fact, the coroner went further than the applicant had argued at the inquest.<\/p>\n

“I am satisfied that the coroner’s decision is neither unlawful nor unreasonable.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Pacemaker Raychel Ferguson was nine when she died in the Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children The mother of a nine-year-old girl who died from hyponatraemia has lost a legal challenge to her condition not being formally recorded at inquest as “hospital-acquired”. Raychel Ferguson, from Londonderry, was given a lethal dose of an intravenous fluid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[48],"tags":[2040,595,715,991,655,323],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60918,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60916\/revisions\/60918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}