Urgent recall issued as liquid food is linked to death of one newborn baby and blood poisoning in 14 others

Stocks of a liquid food linked to the death of a newborn baby and blood poisoning in 14 others were sent to 22 hospitals, England's most senior public health official has revealed.

Paul Cosford, the head of Public Health England (PHE), said an urgent recall had been ordered after a contaminated batch of the food was suspected of causing the septicaemia that killed a baby at a neonatal intensive care unit at London's Guy's and St Thomas' hospital.

Another 14 premature babies in six separate hospitals in London and the south-east all suffered food poisoning after receiving drips containing a batch of liquid feed from a specialist company based in north-west London, ITH Pharma Limited. They are responding to antibiotics but are described as poorly by PHE.

The emergency developed rapidly over the weekend with one baby after another falling ill, triggering a frantic search to identify the source of the bacteria causing the life-threatening septicaemia.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday, Cosford said the feed was the "most likely cause" of the infection and that an urgent investigation was under way into what went wrong. The feed was infected with a bacterium known as Bacillus cereus, PHE said.

Karen Hamling, managing director of ITH Pharma, said the firm was cooperating fully with the investigation.

Cosford said: "We know there are 22 hospitals across the country which received this product. We also know that this product is no longer being used. It is a very short-life product and the regulator has put out an urgent recall to make sure that there isn't any that is being used."

Cosford said every hospital in the country had been told of the problem. "If there are any cases that we are not aware of we will find out about them quickly," he said.

He added: "The manufacturer with the regulator have looked back at the process and have identified a possible point in the manufacturing process where contamination may have entered towards the end of last week.

"This is an extremely unusual instance. A detailed investigation is being carried out by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority. The process for manufacture of medicines of this sort have to be undertaken under the strictest precautions. If that is the cause then clearly something has gone wrong in that manufacturing process.

Cosford's colleague, Dr Deborah Turbitt, told Good Morning Britain that PHE was "fairly confident" that the problem had been contained. She said: "We think we know all of the babies who have been affected at the moment.

"It is just possible that one or two babies have been infected and have been treated who have not been notified to us. We are confident that we know where this product has gone and all of the hospitals have been notified."

Parenteral nutrition is supposed to deliver a variety of nutrients intravenously when a baby is unable to eat on its own.

The nutritional feed is sent out to different units that are looking after small, often vulnerable, babies and is made up on a daily basis for each newborn.

Turbitt said: "We are fairly confident in talking with the company that manufactured the product that there was a single incident that happened on a single day to a limited number of products that went out to babies."

In total there have been four cases at Chelsea and Westminster, three at Guy's and St Thomas' and another baby became ill at the Whittington hospital, also in London. Experts thought the problem could be restricted to London until Brighton and Sussex University hospitals trust reported three cases, Addenbrookes in Cambridge two cases, and Luton and Dunstable University hospital two more. It was not until the early hours of Wednesday morning that the contaminated batch of liquid feed was identified as the problem.

A statement issued by the manufacturer of the feed said: "ITH Pharma is very saddened to hear about the death of a baby in hospital, and that 14 others are ill with septicaemia.

"ITH Pharma is a specialist manufacturer of parenteral nutrition, which is given to babies in neonatal intensive care units. The products in question, which are no longer in circulation, are made to order for individual patients on a daily basis, in response to bespoke orders from hospitals.

"We are cooperating fully with the MHRA in the investigation, and are doing everything we can to help them establish the facts in this case as quickly as possible."