Disabled woman ‘ignored by doctors’ at Sheffield hospital where she died later

Laura Booth, 21, stopped eating after she went into Royal Hallamshire hospital for an eye operation, her mother, Patricia, told an inquest hearing in the city yesterday.

Miss Booth was diagnosed with partial trisomy 13 at birth. She had a number of different life-limiting complications, including learning disabilities.

Mrs Booth, from Sheffield, said her daughter could communicate to some extent and could make her family understand her. She said she would reach her hands out to doctors but they did not respond to her.

“They never discussed anything with Laura. They just ignored her. She couldn’t speak but she could understand everything.

“They never gave her a chance.”

Mrs Booth said: “It just upset Laura that the doctors ignored her.”

Mrs Booth said she and her husband became increasingly concerned when their daughter was not eating in hospital.

“She never had anything to eat all the time she was in the hospital,” she said.

“All Laura lived on was her rice milk and blackcurrant juice.

“We kept telling the doctors ‘this isn’t right, she can’t survive on no food’.”

She told the hearing she and Mr Booth had given up on having children after failed IVF attempts and Miss Booth was “our little miracle”.

“She was a really, really lovely, kind, caring girl,” she said.

“If me or her dad was poorly, she would care for us.”

“When she died, part of us died too,” she said.

The inquest at Sheffield Town Hall is due to last up to three weeks.