At around 10 a.m. on April 16, 2017, Josephine R. was admitted to the emergency room of San Borja Hospital due to contractions she was experiencing after 41 weeks of pregnancy. A little over seven years after that, the courts sentenced the Central Metropolitan Health Service, the hospital, as well as the doctor who assisted her delivery and a midwife, to pay more than one billion in compensation for the obstetric violence to which she was subjected that day.
And according to the ruling of the 26th Civil Court of Santiago, after entering the emergency service of that hospital, the woman was referred to the gynecological and obstetrician doctor. Matias Ignacio Solari Diaz who administered a medication to induce her labor naturally, a procedure that Josephine warned might be impossible due to her medical history.
As the hours passed, the woman felt severe pain, as well as a series of decreases in her daughter’s fetal heartbeat. Despite Josephine’s calls for help, medical staff artificially ruptured her membranes to induce labor. This procedure generated the release of amniotic fluid, to which the mother requested that a cesarean section be performed, since her daughter was suffering and she was not progressing in labor.
Despite calls for help, the court ruled, Dr. Solari did not provide assistance, and there was a period of six hours without professional attention. At 2 a.m., Josephine was finally subjected to a process that she described in court as “torture,” since “she felt a lot of pain, she pushed and pushed without her daughter being able to come out, and after 20 minutes in which she did the impossible for her daughter to be born“Since I sensed that she was suffering, the doctor Solari recently approached me telling me that she had ‘failed’, that she was clearly not being able to give birth to her daughter, and that he would now have her born using forceps.”
At 2:28 in the morning, the woman’s daughter, who was admitted more than 12 hours earlier, was born, but due to the asphyxiation caused by the entire medical procedure, she was hospitalized for three months and, according to the case, Josephine -del same name as his mother 13 pathologies were diagnosedmainly neurological and psychomotor.
During the judicial process, it was also determined that the girl, now seven years old, “suffers extremely serious brain damage, which It leaves her prostrate, blind, deaf, without cognitive capacity, without motor capacity, without the ability to feed herself physiologically.with lung damage that forces her to be oxygen-dependent for life, as a consequence of grade III hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy.”
This caused the woman, represented by the lawyer Héctor Musso, to resort to justice and file a claim for damages against the Central Metropolitan Health Service, the San Borja Hospital, as well as the doctor Solari and the midwife. Elizabeth Salazarwho – she denounced – also had degrading treatment with her during her birth.
At the trial, the doctor claimed regarding the complaints that he did not attend to the patient, that he was performing a cesarean section in another birth, and even pointed out that she had gone to the bathroom “Pee” (sic) during that time. The health service, for its part, disassociated itself from legal responsibility for what happened to the doctor.
Despite this, the court determined in its ruling, to which it had access Thirdthat in this case the health care was a procedure with obstetric violence, since “it presented vast non-compliance with the protocols applicable to the case, given that the medical team, as a whole, incurred numerous and repeated errors, omissions and delays in the evaluation of the patient’s clinical parameters.” He also pointed out that the hospital and the health service did not have the protocols to replace the gynecologist when he was providing other care.
In the opinion of the court, the evidence presented during the judicial process shows that the medical care was “openly negligent and detached. Despite the excuses presented by the doctor, the court determined that he “was responsible for monitoring and controlling compliance with the induction protocol, a function of which was disengaged, delegating this task to auxiliary staff, specifically midwives. That is, he adopted a passive attitude, waiting to be informed of an adverse event and, when his intervention was requested, he simply omitted to attend to the patient.”
In the case of the midwife, the court determined that she did not insist on seeking the intervention of another doctor in the face of the refusals of the person who was supposed to care for the patient, in addition to having distanced herself from the duties of her profession. In summary, it concludes that both health professionals “They acted with fault or negligence in providing care.”
The court also determined that there were a series of “reproaches relating to inappropriate language and behaviour” used by Solari, who is questioned for having excused himself for “peeing”.The use of a childish expression, openly dismissive of the tragic consequences suffered by the daughter of his patient, is shocking. All these circumstances also reflect the prevalence of a hostile and inattentive climate in the treatment provided to the patient,” the ruling adds.
This Tuesday, finally the 26th Civil Court of Santiago ruled in favor of the minor affected by the medical procedure and determined that the Central Metropolitan Health Service, the San Borja Hospital, the doctor Solari and the midwife Salazar must “join in and severally” -among all- pay $1,042,691,340 total.
In detail, it is $500 million for moral damages to the minor, $250 million to her mother, the same amount for the father and $42,691,340 in “future emerging damages”, which corresponds to the monthly expenses that the family will have to incur to care for their daughter.
After the ruling, the lawyer representing the minor, Hector Mussomaintains to this medium that “we are not only satisfied with the amount of compensation, which will certainly help to cope with the treatments that little Josephine will need for life, but because of the direct and crude reproach of the obstetric violence that my client suffered and that women in this country suffer daily. at the moment of childbirth, transforming a beautiful moment in the life of every mother into a humiliating and painful process that we must eradicate.”
This ruling is the second highest compensation ever handed down by a court, following another ruling last year when the Metropolitan Health Service South East was ordered to pay a total compensation of $1,050,000,000 to the family of a patient who was left in a vegetative state after thyroid removal surgery.
