Baby organ letter shock

The Retained Organs Commission held board and public meetings in the city, part of a series of United Kingdom-wide events to raise awar-eness of its work.

But the woman from Cwmbran, who does not wish to be named, said she received a letter about the meeting "out of the blue" two years after her own inquiries to the University of Wales Hospital (the Heath) in Cardiff had been concluded.

She had satisfied herself, based on correspondence with the hospital, that it had not retained organs from her three-week-old daughter, who died of a rare birth defect in 1990.

But the ROC letter brought her fears, raised in the wake of the organ retention scandal at Liverpool's Alder Hey Hospital, flooding back. These were compounded when she tried to double check with the hospital, only to find her daughter's medical records were not available.

"When I saw the words Retained Organs Commission I lost it. I was abs-olutely hysterical," she said.

"I dealt with the hospital, I'd not contacted the commission. I couldn't understand how they had my name and address. I understand they sent the letter through the trust. Surely they could have filtered out the people whose cases had been concluded?

"After Alder Hey I contacted the Heath. I was finally told no postmortem had been carried out on my daughter. I have a letter confirming it.

"I will never fully get over her death, but I've learned to live with the pain. This has brought it all back and put doubt in my mind again, especially because her records aren't available."

A ROC spokeswoman said letters info-rming people of meetings and of the commission's role go out via trusts, in this case Cardiff and The Vale, using the trust's database.

"We try to connect with families affected by possible organ retention but do not have direct access to addresses," she said.

"We apologise for any distress this correspondence may have caused."