Last week, a Kaliningrad court placed under house arrest Elina Sushkevich, a doctor and resuscitator who was detained in connection with the death of a premature baby. Medical professionals spoke in her defense.
Sushkevich’s colleague told the BBC that it is almost impossible to deliver such a baby. On the eve of June 30, the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) reported that a criminal case had been opened against a doctor under the article on the murder of a minor in a helpless condition.
The child, whose death triggered a case, was born on November 6 last year in the Kaliningrad maternity hospital No. 4. His mother, 27-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan Zamira Ahmedova, gave birth in the sixth month of pregnancy. “The baby was born with an extremely low body weight of 700 grams at a gestational age of 23 weeks and three days, which is at the threshold of viability, and survived for about five hours,” according to a statement from the Russian Society of Neonatologists.
Sushkevich is a resuscitation anesthesiologist at the Department of Intensive Care and Resuscitation of the Regional Perinatal Center for Newborns. In addition to her, the acting head doctor of the Maternity Hospital No. 4, Elena Belaya, became a suspect in the case. At first, Belaya was accused of abuse of office with serious consequences. She was placed in pre-trial detention, but after the professional community rallied to her defense and the governor of the Kaliningrad region, Anton Alikhanov, appealed to the investigators to soften the measure of detention, she was released from detention and placed under house arrest.
“I certainly want to support all doctors, they have the right to make mistakes. But medical error and murder are two different things. Of course, I want doctors to continue to treat us, because the hysteria that is being stirred up about this issue does not do any good, especially for the patients,” the governor said on Monday.
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According to the version of the investigation published on the website of the Investigative Committee, the acting chief doctor of the maternity hospital, after receiving information from the doctors on duty about the critical condition of the baby, understood that its death would worsen the statistics, which “could negatively affect her future appointment as chief doctor. For this reason, and also to save the resources of the maternity hospital, Belaya “made the decision to commit the murder of the newborn.
“To commit the murder of the minor child, Belaya involved doctor Sushkevich, who arrived as part of a resuscitation team to provide medical assistance to the child and further transport him to the perinatal center, with whom she had previously discussed the method of killing the child,” – as stated in the press release of the Investigative Committee of Russia.
According to the investigation, the resuscitator Sushkevich administered a lethal dose of the drug “magnesium sulfate”, after which the baby died. “Then, on the instructions of Belaya, with the aim of concealing the murder of the minor, deliberately false information was introduced into the history of the birth, stating that there was a fact of intranatal death, that is, the death of the fetus,” the Investigative Committee’s statement said.
Sushkevich was eventually charged with committing the murder, while Belaya was charged with organizing it. Both defendants are currently under house arrest. In November, the acting chief doctor was charged with abuse of power.
The criminal case has attracted widespread public attention. Many representatives of the medical community have expressed their support for Sushkevich, whose criminal case only recently came to light. “The accusation against Elina Sergeevna Sushkevich of killing a newborn baby is absurd ‘from the point of view of the system of perinatal care, medical logic and common sense created in our country,’ according to a statement by the Russian Society of Neonatologists. According to the doctors, the actions of the investigators will result in “society losing first one and then many other highly qualified doctors. Sushkevich is the main doctor in charge of transporting newborns and treating the sickest newborns at the Kaliningrad region’s perinatal center. Her house arrest will negatively affect the quality of medical care in the region, the resuscitator’s colleagues warned. Doctors have also launched a flash mob on social media in support of Sushkevich.
A child with extremely low body weight of 700 grams was born at a gestational age of 23 weeks and three days – the survival rate for such patients in the world does not exceed 5-10%, as noted in the statement of neonatologists. In 2011, Russia adopted the World Health Organization’s standards, according to which infants should be cared for from 22 weeks of age, with a weight of 500 grams and a body length of more than 35 centimeters. At the same time, resuscitation of infants born at this gestational age is performed only in Russia and Turkey. In most countries, premature infants receive supportive therapy until 24 weeks of gestation, and if they survive, their care is initiated. It is very difficult to take care of premature babies born at 22-23 weeks of pregnancy – not every maternity hospital and clinic has the ability to cope with such a task, said Anna Lenyushkina, head of the clinical work department of the neonatal intensive care unit at the National Medical Research Center for Obstetrics, Gynecology and Perinatology named after Academician V.I. Kulakov, as reported by BBC.
“In order to take care of such children, a whole system of perinatal care has been created. It involves concentrating such women and children in institutions of the so-called third functional level. Elina [Sushkevich] is actually a counselor for the entire Kaliningrad region. She goes out to rescue such children and transport them from the first and second level institutions to the third level institutions. But it was already futile to transport this baby, because he was in an untreatable condition,” Lenyushkina believes.
“A child born at 23 weeks of gestation has a 95% chance of not surviving. The death of such a child cannot be called predetermined, but the probability is extremely high,” the expert emphasized.
“This case has caused a resonance [among medical professionals], mainly because children at 23 weeks are practically non-viable. In addition, we all know this doctor very well,” Lenyushkina said. “She is a very active member of the Council of Neonatologists, always visible and well-known. Her moral character and professional qualities are beyond doubt in the community, because this person is known to everyone.