In late 2025 (November 26th/27th) the maternity unit in Litomerice hospital witnessed two neonatal deaths on one shift. For the privacy of the families concerned, no clinical information about the deaths and what preceded them have been made public. I would like to wish sincere condolences to the families affected.
Litomerice is a small maternity unit. In 2023 there were 400 births, a year later it was 528 and the leadership was expecting the number to go up to 600 in 2025. The numbers keep rising because the hospital opened a Midwifery led unit which became very popular and mothers from further afield travel to birth there. They offer a friendly woman-centred approach.
The lead obstetrician for the Delivery Suite and Midwifery Led Unit is Petr Holba. Petr Holba is a popular obstetrician and his philosophy is to work with women to honour their wishes in birth. Midwifery led units in the Czech Republic are a fairly new concept, different to countries where midwifery has more history as an autonomous profession (like the UK), therefore the unit has a lead obstetrician, even though you would rightly expect that there should be a lead midwife at the helm of a midwifery-led unit.
After the incident when two babies died on the same night, the lead obstetrician Petr Holba was suspended together with the junior obstetrician and the midwife who were on shift that night. Although Petr Holba was not the obstetrician on shift that night and therefore was not present to the incidents, his suspension continues. The Clinical Lead for Maternity Dr Petra Hejtmankova was the on call obstetrician that night and she continued her duties since then as usual. No one from the Neonatology department was suspended as a result of the two deaths. Both babies underwent resuscitation by the neonatal team. No clinical details about the cases have been made public. Litomerice Hospital led an internal investigation which has not been made public. Police was notified and started criminal investigation into the deaths with first interrogations held in January 2026.
Petr Holba has been speaking about the backdrop of the incident publicly. Prior to the incident he had been exposed to political pressures from ODS a Czech political party which operates in the area and holds some positions in the local governing bodies. Representatives of ODS wanted his public support for the party, which he refused. According to him, the refusal led to conflicts and complications in the workplace.
The deaths need to be investigated independently and any modifiable factors that could have contributed to the poor outcomes should be identified and lessons learned. However, the presumption of innocence has to be upheld. It is of course great to give the staff involved in the case some leave to recover, it is however not acceptable to forcibly suspend them without any evidence of them having caused harm. Although the event is truly an outlier, it is not statistically impossible, therefore it can’t be concluded without any further evidence that the deaths were caused by the staff on shift that night. What is also very strange is that some maternity staff were suspended while neonatal staff who resuscitated and were responsible for the neonatal care were not. Neither was the attending obstetrician. It hints towards the management of the hospital looking for scapegoats rather than wanting to suspend all involved as a precaution.
Clearly for some the Midwifery led unit has been a thorn in the eye for a while. As it happens in many other places around the world, incidents like these tend to be used to suspend services which women find favourable while you never witness a similar prompt action when baby deaths happen on classic obstetric-led labor wards. In 2023 (the most recent nationally collected statistics) 71 babies died in the Czech Republic in the first 7 days of life. Naturally, we have to ask, how many of those deaths prompted a police investigation? Typically in hospital neonatal deaths are not investigated by the police. Whether that is good or bad, I am not certain. But there is a massive difference between approach to out of hospital births (which tend to be criminalised) and it seems that midwifery-led units may now face the same adversity.
While the Czech Gynea/Obstetric Society made a statement which blamed the hospital staff for the deaths (without any evidence), CZ Union of Midwives made a statement requesting independent investigation and upholding the innocent until proven guilty principle. Senator and obstetrician Ondrej Simetka also advocates for waiting with judgements until all facts have been investigated and neonatologist Hynek Canibal is asking for investigation of all multidisciplinary care including neonatal care, not just obstetric care, to fully understand what happened. Josef Zahumensky, obstetrician from Slovakia also expressed his support to the bereaved families and the multidisciplinary team at Litomerice maternity unit.
There has been a petition for returning the suspended healthcare professionals back to their positions and it looks like this should be happening soon. It remains unclear whether any details of the hospital investigations will be made public. We will have to wait and see for results of the police investigation into the deaths.
Midwifery by Lenka 