Police were today questioning staff at a hospital in Sicily where a child was born with suspected brain damage after two doctors attending his mother allegedly came to blows over the need for a caesarean as she went into labour.
Laura Salpietro, 30, had her womb removed following the birth. Her husband claims this took place almost an hour and a half late because of the brawl. Her son had two heart attacks shortly after the birth and is still in a drug-induced coma.
Both doctors have been suspended, and the incident, at the Policlinico hospital, in Messina, last Thursday, is the subject of four investigations – by the hospital authorities, a local prosecutor, the regional health authority, and the ministry of health in Rome.
One of the doctors involved and the head of the hospital’s obstetrics department have denied a link between the fight and the subsequent events.
But the woman’s husband, Matteo Molonia, said there had been no previous hint of complications. “The sonographic scans and clinical examinations had ruled out any health problems for my wife and son,” he said. He told the Ansa news agency: “My wife was already in the labour room when her gynaecologist, who followed her pregnancy, and another doctor began to argue. The dispute erupted when her personal gynaecologist suggested a caesarean and the other objected.”
I wonder (genuinely) if any of these two bothered to ask the woman what she thought or felt. They were deciding a surgical procedure over her body but conspicuously, her thoughts on the matter are absent.
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