Family of young mother who died after missed UTI speak out

Family of young mother who died after missed UTI speak out for first time Sun 2 Aug 2026 at 7:22am Gia Lam used to tell her friend Lily Tran what she would do when her son was old enough to start school. She would take her boy by one hand and Lily's boy by the other and walk them both in together, one boy on each side. Lily still remembers exactly how she used to say it. "She was innocent, sweet, outgoing, very reliable," Lily recalled. Gia, 32, moved to Sydney from Vietnam in 2010 and settled in Cabramatta, working as a waitress and sending most of her income home to her parents. She rented a room from Lily and over the years the two women became so close they were like sisters. When Gia fell pregnant, Lily found her lighter work at her own workplace, driving her in each day until her belly grew too big to keep going. When Gia went into hospital to give birth, Lily expected to see her friend again within days. But three days later Gia Lam was dead. She died from sepsis, caused after a urinary tract infection (UTI) was missed repeatedly by healthcare professionals, in what a coroner later found was a preventable death. Now her friend and the family who have raised her son since, are speaking out. A missed diagnosis In the days and weeks before giving birth in early 2019, Gia attended two antenatal appointments where an inquest found the infection that killed her could have been caught. On January 21, she told hospital staff she was having difficulty passing urine and in response she was told to drink more fluids. Ten days later on January 31, four days before she died, a urine test came back abnormal but the results were never followed up. After giving birth and sustaining a tear, Lily was called to act as a translator over the phone. Lily said she told the nurse Gia was in pain "down under" and in response she was given painkillers. Two days after the birth, a midwife wrote in Gia's chart that there was a "very offensive" smell coming from her perineum, the kind of detail a coroner later said should have led to urgent testing but it did not. Keen to be home with her family for Chinese New Year, Gia was discharged that afternoon. No interpreter had been provided, despite her limited English. The coroner later found her discharge was "premature and inappropriate". When Gia returned home, her infection had already set in, and she would be dead within two days. 'Not herself' The day after she returned home, a midwife visiting as part of an at-home-care program came to check on Gia. Again no interpreter had been arranged, so Gia called Lily and put her on speakerphone, telling her she was experiencing pain in her abdominal area. Lily said that rather than picking up on how unwell her friend had become, the midwife fixated on her hygiene. "I said she's already [showered], and she said, I can still smell it, it's really strong," Lily said. "I said just look after her, but the nurse keeps complaining she's not clean." The coroner found the midwife should have recognised how serious things had become and called an ambulance. Instead, she told Gia to see her GP if the pain didn't improve, something Gia had no way of doing in her condition. Even so, the coroner found that by then, Gia was already too unwell and that even if she had seen a doctor, she would have likely died. Hours later, when Lily got home from work, she walked into Gia's room and knew straight away something was terribly wrong. "She was weak, her eye was rolling up, kind of like white, not herself,"Lily said. An ambulance was called but by then Gia had developed sepsis and went into cardiac arrest soon after arriving at Liverpool Hospital. She was declared dead that evening. Her son was three days old. The next day, the same midwife came back for a follow up visit, not knowing Gia had died overnight. "I asked her, 'why are you coming here?'" Lily said. "She said, 'I'm going to look after your friend.'" Lily told her Gia had already passed away. "She just said 'oh,'" Lily said. Lily believes if the hospital had provided more attention to Gia and supplied a translator she would be alive today. A preventable death In findings handed down in March, Deputy State Coroner Rebecca Hosking agreed Gia's death was preventable. She pointed to the two missed chances to diagnose the infection before the birth, and a persistent failure to arrange an interpreter for Gia. The coroner found the midwife who discharged Gia "unreasonably failed to attach significance" to the smell noted in her chart and recommended the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia consider investigating her care. She also recommended the district audit maternity charts for patients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, to check symptoms are properly recorded. A spokesperson for the Nursing and Midwifery Council of NSW said it received a report from Judge Hosking on May 14 and said it would give "serious consideration to the report findings and recommendations". "Due to strict confidentiality obligations we must adhere to under the law, we can't comment further on this matter," the spokesperson said. In a statement, the South Western Sydney Local Health District (SWSLHD) said it offered its "deepest condolences" to Gia's family and had sincerely apologised for the care she received. It said it had since updated its postnatal care policies, expanded staff training and made interpreters mandatory for patients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds during discharge and home visits. It would not comment on whether the midwife who treated Gia at home was still employed. 'She wanted to become a mother' Gia's parents died before the inquest finished and without ever learning the full story of how their daughter died. Her aunt and uncle, who live in Sydney, have raised her son as their own ever since. Lily is still haunted by what more could have been done. "The government should do upgrades on hospitals … more beds, more translators, more experienced nurses," she said. Gia's uncle, Sen Trinh, said Gia always wanted to become a mother and he was speaking out to raise awareness. "I wanted to share so that these things won't happen again," he said. "I don't want to see these things happen to other people."