Catalogue of deadly errors
Curtis Brown died following a series of blunders by junior doctors just six hours after being born.
He was left with massive brain damage after being starved of oxygen during delivery. An independent report found junior staff failed to spot signs the baby was in distress and botched attempts to resuscitate him.
It criticised the maternity unit at the Conquest Hospital in Hastings, East Sussex, for an atmosphere of ignorance.
Curtis's mother Clare went into labour in November 1998 with no sign of any problems. Then her placenta split and a blood vessel burst, depriving her baby of oxygen. Junior doctor Sarah Aldeen failed four times in three hours to recognise abnormal heart readings. The report said this "directly resulted in baby Brown's death".
When Curtis was born, resuscitation was delayed because an attempt by a second junior doctor to insert tubes into the baby's mouth was not successful.
More experienced medics managed to restart his heart - but hours later doctors told Mrs Brown and her husband Leigh that Curtis would not recover and they took the agonising decision to switch off his ventilator.
The report concluded that if the warning signs had been picked up, Mrs Brown would have undergone a caesarean and Curtis may have lived.
