Doctor cleared over baby’s death

11 August 2004

AMSTERDAM — Utrecht Court cleared a family doctor on Wednesday of negligence in the death of a 16-day-old baby in 2002.

An Afghan couple took their sick baby to the doctor’s on-call post in Utrecht on the night of 7 March 2002.

Defendant Brigitte A., 42, told them to take their baby to the University Medical Centre (UMC) after conducting a short physical examination. She diagnosed the baby was suffering from pneumonia.

But the parents — who barely spoke Dutch — only managed to find the UMC on the university’s De Uithof campus about an hour later, newspaper De Volkskrant reported.

The baby girl died several minutes before arriving at the hospital. An autopsy later revealed she had been born with a heart problem.

Utrecht Court cleared A. of providing insufficient care to the sick child.

[Copyright Expatica News 2004]

Subject: Dutch news