Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital: Worker stood down following baby death in gas mix-up

A hospital engineer who installed the gas outlets at a Sydney hospital where a newborn baby boy died after being mistakenly given nitrous oxide has been stood down.

Liquid Oxygen storage tanks at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital, where the tragedy occured. Picture: Craig Greenhill

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A hospital engineer who installed the gas outlets at a Sydney hospital where a newborn baby boy died after being mistakenly given nitrous oxide has been stood down.

Sonya and Youssef Ghanem - whose other three children were born at the same hospital - had their baby boy on Wednesday, July 13.

The boy was accidentally given the gas instead of oxygen at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital, just minutes after he was born.

A month earlier the same error left a newborn girl with suspected brain damage.

“It is my belief that BOC Limited, which installed and certified the medical gas outlet, and Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital operating theatres, which was required under Australian standards to check it, will share responsibility for this tragedy,” NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner said on Tuesday as she handed down the findings of an interim report into the fatal bungle.

Youssef and Sonya Ghanem, the parents of baby John who died at Bankstown Hospital after being given nitrous oxide gas instead of oxygen.