9 January 2006

BRUSSELS – A Belgian surgeon who has admitted to several previous “mercy killings” has been charged with killing a patient in France.

The news agency AFP reported on Monday that a female doctor had been held in custody since Saturday for giving a 74-year-old patient an insulin overdose.

Cedric Cabut, a public prosecutor in the eastern French town of Belley, said the patient had been hospitalised after getting an infection in a toe which had been removed and because she was suffering from ill health.

The surgeon treating her at Belley Hospital had admitted injecting 200 units of insulin into the woman’s drip.

Cabut said it was not certain that the insulin had killed the patient, since she died two days after the overdose, on 23 December.

However, Cabut said the intention to kill her had been established.

He added that, during interviews with the police, the doctor had admitted being imprisoned for four months in Belgium for fraudulently using a patient’s blue health card.

She also claimed responsibility for several acts of euthanasia, including that of her own grandmother, before the Belgian law legalising some forms of “mercy killing” was introduced in 2002. She moved to France to work in 2001.

Cabut said the doctor suffered from depression and alcoholism.

The French authorities intend to ask for Belgium’s legal records about the doctor.

[Copyright Expatica News 2006]

Subject: Belgian news