Six top staff, including two surgeons, at one of Paris's leading public hospitals are facing manslaughter charges over the death of a patient who contracted gangrene after undergoing surgery.
The case, in which, coincidentally, the deceased had been the hospital's chemist overseeing internal hygiene, has come amid a mounting crisis in France's public health system. Hailed in Britain as a model for the National Health Service, the French service has been criticized at home for poor hygiene after reports that 10,000 patients a year died from infections contracted in the country's 1,500 state medical institutions.
During the summer heatwave, 15,000 old people died because of inadequate care.
Preliminary charges brought against the two surgeons, three anesthetists and the chief chemist at La Pitie-Salpetriere followed the death in 1999 of Frederic Pradier, 46. He died after undergoing surgery following a stroke.
Judicial sources said on Tuesday that an inquiry was examining "a chain of negligent events" and that the Paris public hospital administration also faced prosecution. The service, which oversees 49 institutions in the capital, is already facing charges over the death of a woman of 70 who contracted pneumonia at the Cochin hospital.
An examining magistrate will decide whether the doctors at La Pitie will be tried but the investigation comes after nationwide concern over the state of the national health system which is underfunded and understaffed. The 750,000 public hospital workers, including surgeons, have been demonstrating this month and have called for the resignation of the health minister, Jean-Francois Mattei.
Public awareness of the risk of infection in public hospitals -- 800,000 cases are reported every year -- rose after Guillaume Depardieu, son of the actor, Gerard, revealed that he had been forced to have a leg amputated this year because of chronic illness after an operation in 1995. There was also concern after the sudden death of Jean-Luc Lagardere, head of the Hachette empire, who died in March of an infection after a benign operation.
Examining magistrates have also brought preliminary charges of negligence against the national sports clinic where 60 cases of neglect of patients who contracted chronic illnesses during surgery are being investigated.
Alain-Michel Ceretti, who heads a lobby calling for better hygiene, said if public hospitals, whose total budget already reaches 50 billion euros (US$62 billion), were given the funds they needed "we could save the lives of at least 6,000 patients a year. I am shaken every day by the way infection is not detected or is badly treated," he added. "The authorities must stop claiming that the situation where 6 percent of patients are infected during a stay in hospital is unavoidable.
"Hospitals with a good hygiene record get no recognition and those with a bad record are ignored."
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