Nicola’s first and only birthday
Jo Moreno’s baby girl did turn one, but died days after this photo was taken. She was just one of hundreds of victims of an appalling medical scandal. Fifty years on, Lorraine Fisher meets the families still fighting against a tide of shocking cover-ups and injustice
Sitting in an armchair, tenderly cradling her sickly 11-month-old daughter in her arms, Jo Moreno made a deal with God. ‘Lord,’ she prayed, ‘if you let me have her for her first birthday, you can take her.’
Jo got her wish: a few days later her beautiful little girl Nicola was blowing out a solitary candle on her cake, surrounded by her doting family. But within weeks Nicola was in hospital again, never to come home. The health problems she’d been born with had overwhelmed her young body and she stood no chance of survival.