One fateful day in October, life changed forever for Praveen Halappanavar. The engineer from India, who had settled in Ireland four years earlier with his wife, Savita, found himself suddenly a widower.
Savita, a 31-year-old
dentist, had died of blood poisoning after being denied an abortion for a
miscarrying fetus under Ireland's strict laws, her husband says. A month later,
Halappanavar is without his beloved partner and the child they both
longed for -- and now fears the truth behind her tragic death may be
lost, too.
"We've seen some
tampering (with) the medical records -- basically some key information
in the medical reports is missing.
The missing notes concern the couple's requests to hospital staff for a termination, Halappanavar said.
The Galway/Roscommon University Hospitals Group has declined to comment on his claim.
Meanwhile, heath authorities have already launched one inquiry into Savita's death, and
a second into the care of critically ill patients was announced by the
Board of the Health Information and Quality Authority on Friday. Doctors at the Galway University Hospital told her she was miscarrying and that her baby would likely die.Savita's husband says
his wife, who was in extreme pain, asked for a termination, but was told
that Ireland is a Catholic country and that the procedure could not be
carried out while the fetus was alive.
"We requested a
termination," he said. "We wanted to go back, to go home and think about
the next pregnancy because it was a planned pregnancy. We were so
happy, we wanted to have babies."
Three days after the request for a termination was made, the fetus died and was removed.
Four days later, Savita was dead from a blood infection.
The circumstances of her
death have prompted outrage in Ireland. Protests in support of Savita,
held not just in Ireland but across the world, have urged the country's
politicians to update its abortion laws and prevent similar tragedies.In Ireland, abortion is
legal if the mother's life is at risk, which differs from her health
being at risk, said Kitty Holland, a reporter with the Irish Times.
With abortion a hot-button issue in Ireland, there has been political fallout from the controversy, too.
Prime Minister Enda
Kenny is under pressure to get Halappanavar to assist with a Health
Service Executive inquiry into his wife's death, which was the first
investigation set up.
But Halappanavar says
government steps so far have done little to inspire confidence, not just
because officials took weeks to announce the inquiry, but also because
when they did, three of the seven medical professionals on the
investigation team were from the same hospital where his wife died.
Although they have now been replaced on the team, other issues remain, Halappanavar said.
"We made a request for
termination and there is no note of the request at all, and of the
medical notes. The response from the doctor is not in the medical
records either."
Asked what he thinks has happened to the information, Halappanavar has no answer.
"We don't know what has
happened to it," Halappanavar said. "It is strange that all other
information is in there -- when we requested things like tea and toast,
and when things like we requested an extra blanket, all that is in the
medical notes."
Halappanavar says he
will settle for nothing less than a full public inquiry -- one in which
the wider health service, not just his wife's death, is investigated by
independent experts.
"Every single person in
the family asked me how could this happen in a place like Ireland in the
21st century, because it was just so simple," he said.
"When they knew the baby
was not going to survive, why not think about the bigger life which was
the mother, my wife Savita? And they didn't."
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