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Doctors arrested for medical malpractice in southern Italy

Xinhua, April 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

Four doctors were put under house arrest and seven others including an obstetrician were suspended from work in southern Italy on Thursday on charges of cover-ups of medical malpractice, local media said.

The obstetrics and gynecology, neonatology and anesthetic departments of the Ospedali Riuniti hospital in the city of Reggio Calabria had allegedly set up an illicit system to cover up some serious mistakes made by doctors.

Investigators suspect that two newborns died and another one suffered irreversible injury because of the covered-up mistakes.

The seizures of a woman in labor, the alleged procured abortion of another one, and the lacerations of private parts of others were also at the center of the probe.

Thursday's arrests were the latest in a series of malpractice and corruption scandals in the Italian health system.

Earlier this week, a nurse who had been jailed in Pisa on suspicion of killing 13 patients was released from pretrial detention. It had emerged from investigations that she injected lethal doses of Heparin, an anticoagulant, into men and women aged 61-88, none of them terminally ill.

Last February four employees in Cosenza were suspected of having caused 4.7 million euros (5.3 million U.S. dollars) in damages for not collecting payments from patients in the city's emergency rooms, days after another operation conducted by finance police in Naples found that regional public health officials illicitly spent as much as around 16 million euros in taxpayer money.

Even Lombardy region, whose health system is considered as the most developed in Italy, has been hit by several scandals, of which the latest emerged in February when 21 public officials and businessmen were arrested or otherwise cautioned in a probe into alleged corruption in the local health system.

Among the arrested there was rightist regional councilors and health committee head Fabio Rizzi, along with his wife. Rizzi, an anesthesiologist and former Senator, had been also the creator of a recent reform of the healthcare system in the northern region. Enditem