Manchester Arena bombing's youngest victim might have survived with better first aid, report finds
The youngest victim of the Manchester Arena bombing could have survived if she had received better medical treatment, according to a new report.
Saffie-Rose Roussos was eight-years-old when she was killed alongside 21 other people in May 2017 after terrorist Salman Abedi detonated a bomb in the arena foyer following a pop concert.
Evidence emerged on Monday that Saffie-Rose died as a result of losing too much blood from her legs because the simple procedure of applying tourniquets to stop the bleeding was not used.
The new evidence, which was revealed in a report commissioned privately by the Roussos family, significantly contrasts from the findings of the public arena inquiry, whose experts concluded that Saffie-Rose’s injuries were “unsurvivable”.
But medical experts instructed by the Roussos family found that Saffie-Rose was alive for more than an hour after the detonation, during which she tried to push herself up with her arms, drank some water and asked for her mother.
The report also found that, while on her way to hospital in an ambulance, the eight-year-old asked a paramedic, "am I going to die?".
Saffie-Rose was pronounced dead at hospital at 11.40pm, more than an hour after the attack.
Her parents, who previously believed their daughter was knocked unconscious from the bomb, said they now know that she “bled to death”.
“She could have been saved," her father, Andrew Roussos, told the BBC.
He added: "Medically trained people were with her. And she was asking for help. She knew what was happening.
"Eight-year-olds don't ask those questions. Doesn't matter how hurt they are, they want their mum. They want to be treated, they want to be out of pain. Not to be in the sound mind to ask the paramedic whether she's going to die.
"How do we carry on living with this information? How can we carry on breathing with this information?
"I can't look at Saffie's picture. Since I've read this report, I can't look at her."
The report found that the ambulance crew did not use tourniquets or splints on Saffie-Rose’s injuries, and neither did the medical team when she arrived at A&E.
Mr Roussos said: "Our medical experts have suggested that there were procedures that Saffie could have had and she didn't. She was losing that much blood. And there wasn't a successful procedure in place to get that blood into Saffie - even in A&E. Why?"
In September last year, the public inquiry heard that Saffie-Rose was “unlikely to survive from her injuries,” according to blast wave experts. But in a later report from March 2020, they concluded that her injuries were “unsurvivable with current advanced medical treatment.”
On Monday Paul Greaney QC, counsel to the inquiry, said: “On the basis of the material since we made our opening statement, survivability is an issue in the case of Saffie.”
The inquiry has previously heard of the errors made by the emergency services on the night of the attack, including a delayed response and lack of appropriate equipment.
There were only three paramedics at the scene of the explosion to attend to the 260 injured people all night, and the first did not arrive until 19 minutes after the bomb was detonated. Meanwhile, firefighters did not arrive for more than two hours following the bombing.
The victims' families have previously heard police radio recordings from the night, where one officer asked, “where's our ambulances please?,” 24 minutes after the bomb was detonated, to which the controller replied: “We don’t know. We are calling them again”.
When the injured were finally carried out of the arena, many were moved on makeshift stretchers made from cardboard and crowd control barriers.
