No prosecutions over girl's death

No-one will be prosecuted over Raychel Ferguson's death

No-one is to be prosecuted over the death of schoolgirl Raychel Ferguson, the Public Prosecution Service has said.

Raychel, 9, died in 2001 after surgery in Altnagelvin Hospital.

A public inquiry is being held into her death, and the similar deaths of two other children.

It has been claimed that all three died needlessly of sodium shortage due to the incorrect administration of fluids in Northern Ireland hospitals.

Raychel's mother, Marie, said that the news was "hard to take".

"If there had been a prosecution in Raychel's case then, I feel, it would have opened the flood-gates for a lot of other cases," she said.

Mrs Ferguson said that she now felt Raychel's life "didn't mean anything, because she's in a cemetery now and nobody is going to be held accountable for what happened to her".

On Thursday, the PPS said there would be no prosecutions over the deaths of two other children, who died in similar circumstances. Raychel died four days after routine surgery to have her appendix removed at Altnagelvin Hospital in June 2001.

Adam Strain, four, from Belfast, died at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, while 17-month-old Fermanagh girl Lucy Crawford passed away at the Erne Hospital, Enniskillen in 2000.

In November 2004, the then Health Minister Angela Smith launched an inquiry into the three deaths.

The inquiry was suspended in 2005 so that the police could investigate the deaths.