Sick baby waits 11 hours with no bed at same hospital where four-year-old boy at the centre of NHS election battle was pictured sleeping on the floor
- Kertu Babik took coughing three-week-old Blanka to Leeds General Infirmary
- She says that she arrived at 5.45pm and didn’t get a ward and bed until 5am
- Reported having to step over a parent who was sleeping on the floor at the site
An unwell baby waited 11 hours for a bed at the same NHS hospital where a sick boy was photographed sleeping on the floor.
Kertu Babik, said she tearfully and begged nurses to see a doctor at Leeds General Infirmary.
Three-week-old Blanka would spend a week recovering at the West Yorkshire hospital after being diagnosed with bronchiolitis.
Kertu Babik (left) and her partner, Benjamin (right) say the NHS is crumbling and they had to wait for 11 hours to get their child a bed at Leeds General Infirmary
Ms Babik, 30, and her partner Benjamin, 36, said that though the staff were ‘phenomenal’, the NHS is now a ‘sinking ship’.
They spoke to Mirror Online in support of the mother who found herself under fire after sharing an image of her four-year old-son on the floor.
The couple spent 11 hours waiting for treatment after arriving at A&E with Blanka at 5.45pm on November 22.
Around 8.30pm, they were sent to the Children’s Assessment Unit, where they waited in a ‘dark and boiling’, corridor with their lethargic and couging infant. Finally, at midnight, their baby was diagnosed in a treatment room.
Benjamin is pictured waiting with three-week-old Blanka at the hospital in West Yorkshire
The couple say that they were only put on a ward with a bed and cot at 5am. The hospital claims it was 2am.
Kertu said some of the beds were ‘makeshift’ with two chairs shoved together and claims she saw one parent sleeping on the floor next to their child.
‘We’ve only decided to speak out because of what the other mum has had to put up with,’ she said. ‘She was not lying about the state of the NHS.’
It comes after a nine-month-old named Lily had to wait six hours for a bed at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire.
Ben said: ‘I have watched the NHS gradually decline over the last 10 years. My mum used to be a nurse and my two aunts are still. My grandparents came here as refugees from Poland and Austria. He served in the Polish air force and later the RAF, going on to fight at Normandy. They would turn in their graves if they saw the NHS they were once so proud of.’
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust’s chief nurse, Lisa Grant, said that she’d like to sincerely apologise to Blanka and her family, adding Chief Executive Julian Hartley had also offered an apology.
She said the hospitals are extremely busy and were suffering from significant demand.
Ms Grant said that its Children’s Assessment and Treatment Unit usually has 50 patients in 24 hours on busy days. But now they are seeing up to 90 patients in the unit every day.