Midwife told new mum 'don't feed your baby formula milk as terrorists poison it'

29 July 2023 , 16:16

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Midwife Anna Semenenko

A “bossy” midwife who told a new mum terrorists could contaminate her formula milk with substances “to kill babies” has been banned from the profession. Russian Anna Semenenko, who ­qualified in Leningrad in 1995, made the remark when trying to persuade the mother to breastfeed instead.

She was struck off this month over a string of allegations about competence and conduct between 2015 and 2019. But Ms Semenenko, 59, has denied the findings and claims she has been targeted for being Russian.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council ruled her terrorist comment was “highly inappropriate” and she “failed to treat her patient with dignity and respect” while seeking to influence her with “false and misleading information”. The disciplinary panel also heard she embarrassed another patient by commenting on her “pretty ” private parts and then used the patient’s phone to take photos of her stitching for no clinical reason. She was accused of telling one mum during an intimate examination: “Your husband must have a very small penis as you are very tense.”

And she was found to have pressured a patient into allowing her partner to watch her giving birth – and later joked she would get “10 male doctors” to give the woman her stitches. Staff said she told another patient at the Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall NHS ­ hospitals in south Wales: “I am Anya, I am Russian. If you don’t like that I can get another midwife.”

Anna Semenenko during her time at the Trust

Semenenko has been struck off

The Cardiff panel said her ban marked “the seriousness of the misconduct found”. But at her home in Port Talbot last night, the midwife vowed to appeal and “apply to the High Court for wrongful dismissal”. She added: “I have 25 years’ experience and have delivered 2,000 babies. I’ve always had satisfactory work assessments. Yet I have been made to look like a monster.”

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Ms Semenenko claims she was told not to tell patients she was Russian after joining Royal Gwent Hospital in 2015 and endured jokes about being a KGB agent, drinking vodka and carrying novichok. She said she was suspended in June 2018 and sacked for gross misconduct in July 2019 after complaints she signed off notes for a doctor without checking them. But she added: “I think this is about discrimination because I am Russian. And, yes, I am quite bossy.”

Her legal adviser, Joe Cooray, has made applications to the panel “alleging, among other things, contempt of court, evidence tampering and the presenting of forged documents”.

John Siddle