A grieving mum received a hospital appointment letter for her dead toddler, 14 months after he died at the same hospital.
Imogen Holliday, 36, was emailed inviting three-year-old Raffy to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Raffy Holliday died on March 29 2023 at the age of three, after developing inflammation of the brain caused by the human herpesvirus 6B (HHV-6B).
Imogen described the letter as a cruel reminder of the trauma she went through with her son. She said: "The 29th is always a hard date. Every single month is hard, and it was 14 months on the 29th since we lost Raffy, so I was struggling anyway.
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Raffy died in Great Ormond Street Hospital in March last year (Kent Live/BPM Media)
Parents Imogen and James Holliday with Raffy when he was a baby (Kent Live/BPM Media)"I just feel sick. I don't understand how they don't have a system that updates everybody when a child dies. Seeing 'outpatient appointment' on the letter, it makes you think just how careless, how insensitive, how inappropriate, how thoughtless, how uncompassionate can you be?
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"It's really hard to put into words because just when you think that it's not going to get any worse and I can try and ease into this new way of life, something happens again."
The suggested appointment was for September 20, 2022, which Great Ormond Street has described as an error. The grieving mum told KentOnline: "I'd say I'm shocked but part of me isn't because I have very low expectations of that place."
She continued: "I'd deleted the app so I had to find all my old passwords and everything – it took ages to log in. I knew what I expected it to be, and this wasn't it at all.
Raffy putting on a brave face (Kent Live/BPM Media)
Raffy in hospital (Kent Live/BPM Media)"It's so hard to put into words but Raffy's death has had an impact on everything and this reminder has triggered a lot of negative feelings. The hospital has told me they'll escalate it, but who knows what that means?"
A spokesman for Great Ormond Street said: "We are very sorry this has happened and have spoken to Raffy's family to apologise. There is no excuse, and we can only imagine the distress it has caused.
"The letter, which was dated for an appointment in 2022, was accidentally added to our MyGOSH app due to a fault in a system upgrade. We use the app to try to make it easier to communicate with our families, but we have let them down in this case.
"We are investigating what has happened and will make all necessary changes as soon as possible to ensure this does not happen again. Our thoughts remain with Raffy's family during this time."
HHV-6B is one of nine strains of the herpesvirus and is the cause of the common childhood illness exanthema subitem, also known as roseola or sixth disease, which causes a mild fever and rash.
Approximately 70 per cent of children will contract HHV-6B by the age of three, with most developing a natural immunity that prevents further reinfection, but reactivation of the virus is common in transplant patients and can be fatal for those with weakened immune systems.
Raffy, who was undergoing treatment for leukaemia and had received a bone marrow transplant, lived with the active virus for two years before it took his life.
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After his transplant in 2020, he was tested on a weekly basis for three other strains of the human herpes virus - Epstein Barr which causes glandular fever, cytomegalovirus which causes mononucleosis, and adenovirus which causes the common cold.
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