Drugs firm ITH Pharma charged over contaminated food that 'killed newborn' at London hospital

Intravenous food: two babies died within 10 days at St Thomas' Hospital

Police investigating the death of a premature baby given contaminated food in a London hospital today charged a drugs company with a series of offences.

Yousef Al-Kharboush died from septicaemia at St Thomas’ hospital on June 1, 2014, nine days after being born two months premature with twin brother Abdulilah.

He was one of two babies to die within 10 days at St Thomas’. A third died at the Rosie hospital in Cambridge.

A total of 23 babies at nine British hospitals developed a bacterial infection after receiving the intravenous food, known as Total Parental Nutrition (TPN) and made by ITH Pharma, in Harlesden. The others recovered after being given antibiotics.

A four-year investigation by the Met and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency established that only Yousef’s death was potentially linked to the contaminated batch of TPN.

Today the Met announced that ITH Pharma had been charged with seven counts of supplying a medicinal product not of the nature or quality specified in the prescription.

The firm was also charged with failing to take all reasonably practicable steps to ensure patients were not infected by contaminants, in breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act. Its representatives will appear at Westminster magistrates’ court on December 17.

Yousef’s parents Raaid Sakkijha and Ghada Al-Kharboush today said the length of the investigation had exacerbated their grief.

Mr Sakkijha said: “It has been like living with an open wound that will not close... we never celebrate events such as Yousef’s brother’s birthday because it is too painful a reminder.”

Arti Shah of Fieldfisher law firm, representing the family in an ongoing civil case, said they “suffered the worst grief imaginable”.

The twins were born by emergency section at 32 weeks gestation and drip-fed the liquid food, a batch of which had been contaminated with the lethal bug Bacillus cereus, in intensive care.

At the time, ITH Pharma reportedly said the contamination was in an unspecified raw ingredient from a supplier.

ITH Pharma said today it has “every sympathy for all the families affected” but “will vigorously defend this case”.