CURITIBA, BRAZIL—Three hundred deaths are being studied at a Brazilian hospital for possible links to a medical team charged with murder.
Dr Virginia Soares de Souza and seven of her assistants at an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) have been charged with the death of seven patients. An investigator indicated that twenty of the deaths looked highly suspicious and three hundred were currently being looked into.
De Souza denies the murder charges, and was released on bail last week. She works at the Hospital in Curitiba, a city in the south of Brazil. Prosecutors state that she gave muscle-relaxing drugs to patients before significantly reducing their oxygen supply, causing them to asphyxiate.
Three doctors, three nurses, and a physiotherapist who are suspected of carrying out her orders have also been charged with murders. Medical records of 1700 patients who died at the hospital in the last seven years are now being studied, and more than twenty were deemed suspicious.
Dr Mario Lobato, the chief investigator assigned by Brazil’s health ministry, is adamant about clearing the name of the hospital. “I want to clear the ICU. It’s making me itch.” She said in one recording. “Unfortunately, our mission is to be go-betweens on the springboard to the next life.”
Dr de Souza claims that those accusing her lack the expertise to make any judgments on her practices. “We will soon prove that everything that took place in that ICU is justified by the medical literature.”
By: Julia Roake
Source: BBC
Image: BBC
29 March 2013
09:00am PDT