Two mothers who died of herpes after giving birth could have been infected by a single surgeon, the BBC has found. .

The East Kent Hospitals Trust says it could not identify the source of the infection, and the surgeon had no history of the virus.

Yet, in May and July 2018, two young mothers died from an infection caused by the virus.

Her labour was not progressing quickly, her mother says, and Kimberley kept saying the baby was stuck.

Kimberley was transferred to Kings College Hospital in London, where she was diagnosed with a catastrophic herpes infection.

Neither woman's baby was found to have been infected with the virus.

Both women had what is known as a primary infection - meaning that this was the first time they had been infected by herpes. .

Hospital analysis of the women's medical history indicates they'd not previously had herpes, so they would have had no antibodies - or natural protection - against the virus.

They also set out the belief of the pathologist who investigated both deaths, that the women had been infected with herpes "prior to hospital admission".

BBC News began investigating the East Kent Hospitals Trust's maternity department in 2019, ahead of the inquest of baby Harry Richford, whose death was determined to be "wholly avoidable" by a coroner.

BBC News became aware of the deaths of Kimberley Sampson and Samantha Mulcahy at the same Trust in the spring of 2021, and has worked closely with the families to try to find out what happened to them.

While reviewing documents sent to the families, we noticed that Public Health England (PHE) had looked into the possible source of the herpes viruses.

Among them are two email chains between staff at PHE, the East Kent Hospitals Trust, some NHS bodies and a private lab called Micropathology.

This apparent connection - and possible source of infection - caused concern among the people on the email chain.

In an email sent a fortnight after Samantha died, someone working for the lab says both cases "look like surgical contamination" and asks the Trust to provide "a mouth swab/lesion swab from the suspect surgeon in O&G". .

In an email sent in October 2018, a Micropathology worker says "it seems the most likely explanation [is] that these strains are probably the same… which also adds weight to the idea that these two women were infected with the same virus.".

An email from a member of staff from Public Health England just over a year later says the type of virus was "rare" compared with the previous 10 years of herpes virus samples collected at its lab in north London.

"The only common source here, in a hospital-based scenario, would be the surgeon who performed the operations," he says.

He says it is possible the surgeon may have had a herpetic whitlow - a herpes infection on the finger - which could have "directly seeded the herpes into the abdomen of the women".

This, he says, would have allowed it to spread throughout the abdomen quickly and explains why the women had no external lesions, which you would normally expect to see with a herpes infection.

All surgeons wear gloves during surgery, but Mr Greenhouse says it might have been possible that they split during the operations allowing the virus to spread?

In a statement, the East Kent Hospitals Trust says the surgeon underwent a verbal Occupational Health check where he said he had no history of herpes infection and had no hand lesions, although he was not tested for the virus at the time of the operations?

Referring to the email stating that the type of virus was "rare", compared with other samples collected at PHE's lab, Mr Greenhouse says this makes the likelihood that the women were infected by a common source in the hospital more likely - and much less likely they were infected in the community. .

The East Kent Hospitals Trust points out that PHE's report says although there was a "high probability they are epidemiologically linked" for HSV "this finding does not mean that the viral isolates have an immediate common source or are part of a transmission chain".

In a statement Dr Rebecca Martin, Chief Medical Officer for East Kent Hospitals, said:

"East Kent Hospitals sought specialist support from Public Health England (PHE) following the tragic deaths of Kimberley and Samantha in 2018

The investigations led by the Trust and the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch took advice from a number of experts and concluded that it was not possible to identify the source of either infection

Peter Greenhouse is now carrying out further research into the deaths - in the hope that it might mean new mothers with unexplained sepsis-like symptoms will be tested for herpes as a matter of course