Bulgaria in Shock as 4 Doctors Suspected of Killing Baby

Society | December 3, 2010, Friday // 19:19|  views

The Buglarian public has been shocked and the Interior Ministry and the Doctors' Union have been tangled in an embarrassing dispute over the suspicions that four doctors might have killed deliberately a prematurely-born baby.

The story unraveled over the week after on the initial arrest of the four doctors from the hospital in the town of Gorna Oryahovitsa on November 30, 2010, after the previous day a 17-year-old girl prematurely gave birth to a baby that died the next day.

After the birth, the doctors allegedly told the mother that the baby was still-born; however, an employee of the hospital saw the baby moving in another part of the ward. The mother grew suspicious of the doctors and called the police, who, in addition to eventually arresting the four doctors – interrogated a total of 16 people from the hospital staff.

As a result of the arrests, the Bulgarian Doctors' Union and the medical community in the country rose up in protest against the "police state" measures slamming the Interior Ministry for assuming the role to decide when a baby is still-born. All Bulgarian MPs who are doctors, with the exception of those from the ruling party GERB, issued a protest statement against the actions of the police claiming there are no grounds to investigate their colleagues.

The four detainees, the head of maternity ward, Dimitar Sotirov, the gynecologists Stefan Lazarov and Mihail Milatovich, and pediatrician Katya Getsova, claimed that their arrests were outrageous as the fetus had no chances of survival. They claimed the young mother had been hiding her pregnancy from her parents and that it was not her who called the police on them. The doctors were released on Thursday, December 2, 2010, as the prosecutors could not find definitive evidence of a crime.

A huge scandal erupted on Friday when Interior Minister Tsvetanov and prosecutors from the Veliko Tarnovo District investigating the case in Gorna Oryahovitsa, released tapes of conversations between the doctors that indicated that the doctors were aware of the fact that the prematurely-born baby was alive but did nothing to try to save its life.

According to Tsvetanov, the conversations show that the baby was "deliberately murdered." He explained the tapes have been declassified and released in response to the negative public reaction to the arrests. It turned out that the police had been spying upon some of the doctors involved in the case because of suspicions of financial crimes against Mirolyub Kozhuharov, the head of the hospital in Gorna Oryahovitsa.

The tapes do not provide clear-cut information but do show that the doctors panicked from the fact that the fetus did show signs of life, and that they did not know what to do with it; they also indicate that the baby eventually "died on its own, without interference."

A matter of dispute is the exact age of the fetus – the doctors claim the baby was born in the 21st week of pregnancy, and weighed less than 600 g., while the investigators claim that the birth occurred in the 23rd week, which qualified the baby as a human being.

A conversation of the hospital director and another man shows that Stefan Lazarov who delivered the baby told the mother that it was still-born, and that the mother did not want the baby but that it was actually still alive.

In his conversation with the other person, Kozhuharov reproaches Lazarov for not doing anything to try to save the baby for many hours.

"Now it turns out that we all together killed the baby on purpose. We are not in a trap from which there is no escape," the head of the hospital is taped as saying.

They mention that they should give BGN 900-1000 to a woman to guarantee that she will keep quite but it does not become clear if they mean the mother.

A taped conversation from the following day demonstrates that the doctors are already aware of their role as accomplices and that they could face charges.

The hospital head asks one of the doctors if the baby is still alive, and the doctor says he has to check.

One of them utters the words that they should throw it in a bucket, while the other one says, "How can a person kill it? You cannot kill it. How can you?" "Snezhana put it in the freezer and Ginka took it out," goes one of the lines, apparently referring to the corpse of the baby and female members of the medical staff. The two agree to present the case as an abortion, with a still-born baby.

Eventually, the hospital director orders the gynecologist to check if the baby weighs less than 600 g. and to put the corpse in the freezer for biological waste. The third tape conversation is from the same day.

"This thing went together with Andrey Batashov, it died," says a doctor to the director, which appears to be a rather cynical apparently referring to the death the previous day of popular Bulgarian actor Andrey Batashov.

"Did it die on its own," asks hospital director Kozhuharov.

"Of course, it did on its own, we wouldn't meddle," says the doctor.

"It just didn't exist, nobody heard or saw," concludes Kozhuharov.

"An alive baby was killed deliberately, and it was not given a chance," commented Interior Minister Tsvetanov.

Upon the release of the tapes, Kozhuharov and the other doctors stick to their version that the baby was still-born, and that its movement was not a sign of life but instinctive reactions and convulsions.

"If I knew I had been taped, I would not speak this way. This is how we talk, I wouldn't ask my colleague on the phone if the baby has fibrilations," Kozhuharov explained. He claims that Lazarov, who delivered it, saw that the fetus had no heartbeat while it was still in the uterus. He and the other doctors claim that the baby was born in the 20-21st week, with no heartbeat, and was not a living baby.

Bulgaria's Health Minister Stefan Konstantinov, who is a gynecologist himself, said that he was ashamed of the entire case. The information provided by the Interior Minister suggests that the baby weighed more than 600 g and was born in the 23rd week.

"Since they mention that it was breathing, what else is there to comment on? Even it was an abortion, and even though such children hardly survive long, is that the kind of human behavior that one needs to demonstrate? We are not even talking about medical ethics here, this is about something different," Konstantinov said.

The case is under investigation by both the state authorities and the Bulgarian Doctors' Union.

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Tags: doctors, Bulgarian Doctors' Union, Gorna Oryahovitsa, Mirolyub Kozhuharov, Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, fetus, prematurely-born, abortion, still-born, Stefan Konstantinov

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