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Five people arrested over post-surgery death in Minsk

 

Five people, including the director of Ecomedservice, a large private clinic in downtown Minsk, have been arrested by police over the death of a young woman, Yuliya Kubarava, following plastic surgery.

The four members of the surgical team that had carried out the operation, namely, an anesthesiologist, a surgeon and two nurses, were arrested on Friday afternoon. Ecomedservice Director Halina Valzhankina was apprehended a little later.

Yuliya Kubarava, a 25-year-old resident of Hrodna, underwent reconstructive nose surgery at Ecomedservice on March 26. As her anesthesiologist told BelaPAN on Friday, shortly before his arrest, “Yuliya felt like everybody else does after such operations.”

An ambulance was called for the woman at night, after a nurse noticed that her condition had not improved. Ms. Kubarava was taken to Minsk City Clinical Hospital No. 4. She stayed there comatose for four weeks and died on April 23.

According to the anesthesiologist, as many as 1679 anesthetic procedures were performed in the clinic last year, and none of them resulted in the death of a patient.

On Friday, Alyaksandr Lukashenka directed that the medical personnel and managers of Ecomedservice who are responsible for the death should be dismissed and punished severely.

Representatives of the Investigative Committee of Belarus told reporters later in the day that the ventilator used during the surgery might have malfunctioned. They pointed out that the machine had subsequently been repaired.

In a statement, the health ministry said that the accident had resulted from anesthetic problems.

An inquiry has established that the services provided to Ms. Kubarava by Ecomedservice did not meet the government’s requirements, the ministry said, adding that the clinic’s license to perform anesthetic and resuscitation procedures had been terminated.

A working group has been set up to evaluate the compliance of Ecomedservice with license requirements and regulations. The group is to submit its findings to the health ministry before May 8.

Ivan Ryzhko, a departmental head at the health ministry, has been assigned to exercise supervision over the clinic and make managerial decisions.

Experts warn that Mr. Lukashenka’s crackdown on Ecomedservice may trigger a “war” against other private clinics in Belarus.

“Doctors are being lynched despite the fact that the inquiry is not yet over,” plastic surgeon Mikalay Kurylovich, who holds a doctoral candidate’s degree in medicine, commented to BelaPAN. “A war has already started. Heads will roll.”

Mr. Kurylovich pointed out that similar accidents occurred in state hospitals every day. “If the poor girl had died in such a hospital, everything would be quiet,” he said. “The punishment for the same mistake is ‘death’ for a private clinic and a reprimand for a state hospital.”

In 2005, the government examined the performance of private clinics in Belarus and temporarily suspended the licenses of two of them, Ecomedservice and Nordin. // BelaPAN