Grieving Colchester parents have taken back organ tissue removed from their stillborn son for a post mortem examination.
Robin and Roula Bray, of Shrub End Road, Colchester, discovered this week that 20 one-inch blocks of organ tissue were still being kept at Basildon Hospital where the post mortem examination was carried out.
The distraught couple asked for them to be returned and have also been given lab slides which were used for tests to find out why their stillborn son Harrison died.
Mrs Bray went to Basildon Hospital in May 1998 in the 30th week of her pregnancy after fearing there was something wrong.
Complications set in and the couple's son was born dead, weighing just three pounds.
The couple, who lived in Stock, near Billericay, at the time of the pregnancy, only discovered the tissue parts were kept at Basildon Hospital in the wake of the Alder Hay organ scandal.
Mrs Bray, 29, said: "There are pieces of his kidney, heart and his windpipe. These should have been put back."
She and her husband are now trying to decide whether to have a second cremation for the tissues, which were taken from Harrison's body, while attempting to get on with family life with their children William, one, and Christina, five.
On the consent form, allowing the post mortem examination to go ahead, the couple ticked 'no' in the option worded "I consent to small parts of tissue being retained for research purposes."
A spokeswoman for Basildon and Thurrock General Hospitals NHS Trust said: "Their specific wish as far as the post mortem examination was concerned was that nothing should be retained to be used for research purposes and they were reassured that this request had been met.
"We strongly believe that we have made strenuous efforts to respond to their questions swiftly, openly and sensitively and apologise for the distress that recent events have caused them."
Shock - Robin and Roula Bray, of Colchester.
Picture: Steve Brading
By Julia Gregory
Reporter's e-mail: julia_gregory@thisisessex.co.uk
Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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