Ascensión, the mother of the girl who suffered injuries due to negligence at the Valdepeñas Hospital, explains her case this Thursday in Ciudad Real. Jesús Monroy (EFE)
Paula turns 10 this Friday.
She is bedridden, from which she has not been able to move since she was born.
Negligence on the part of the midwife and the gynecologist who attended her birth left her with severe neurological damage as a result of the lack of oxygen, and which means that she requires attention practically 24 hours a day.
Her family has just received the largest compensation for professional health care negligence in the history of Spain: 4.9 million euros, which are added to 300,000 costs and leave the total figure at 5.2 million euros.
His mother, Ascension, was reluctant to tell her story to the media, but Carmen Flores, president of the Patient Advocate Association, convinced her to do so this Thursday.
“You have to say what you are feeling, that money is logically important, but the fundamental thing is that these barbarities that have destroyed the life of a family are not repeated,” she told Flores.
Since Paula was born, all the energy (and a good part of the money) of this family from Villa Hermosa (Ciudad Real) have been allocated to the care of the little girl, who today suffers from all these consequences: hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy with paralysis Severe infant with predominantly dystonic (involuntary muscle movements), seizures, endoscopic gastrostomy tube feeding.
It has also required numerous surgeries: thyroidectomy, hysterectomy (removal of the uterus), myomectomy (removal of uterine fibroids), cystectomy (removal of the urinary bladder), cholecystectomy (removal of the gallbladder), laminectomy (removal of part of a bone spine), hip/knee replacement, nephrectomy, major laparoscopic procedures, and reconstructive surgery of the digestive tract.
“Many people ask me if my daughter is a vegetable, but she is not.
She feels, she is happy with her when we talk to her, when we give her love, ”explains Ascensión, who gets emotional when she talks about Paula.
"She always needs someone by her side," she says.
Since she was born, the family has not been able to go on vacation or even make excursions to the Lagunas de Ruidera, which they have next to their house.
"They have stolen their childhood from their brothers [who are now 19 and 14 years old]," says her lawyer, Francisco Fernández-Bravo.
From left to right, the president of the association The Patient Advocate, Carmen Flores;
the mother of the girl who suffered injuries due to negligence at the Valdepeñas Hospital, Ascensión;
and the entity's lawyer, Francisco Javier Fernández-Bravo, report on medical negligence, this Thursday in Ciudad Real.
Jesus Monroy (EFE)
The legal battle to obtain compensation has lasted practically the 10 years of Paula's life.
It all started on October 14, 2012, when Ascensión began to notice the symptoms of labor and went to the Gutiérrez Ortega Hospital in Valdepeñas.
Everything was apparently fine.
The pregnancy had been normal and her other two children were born completely healthy.
—It has an [umbilical] cord around the neck, Ascensión recounts the midwife saying.
Are you going to do a caesarean section?
“No, it's going to go quickly.
According to the lawyer's account, during the control of the evolution of the delivery, the midwife decided to do without one of the two straps used for monitoring the fetal heart rate and the control of the uterine dynamics of the Eco-Doppler system, a system which aims to detect early signs indicative of a possible loss of fetal well-being.
“That decision prevented the physical situation of the fetus from being effectively controlled.
Nor was importance given to the 26 episodes of decreased fetal heart rate, to levels of 80 and even 60 beats per minute that are marked on the graphic record, nor to the nine bradycardia annotations that were printed on said strip, this is, decreases in fetal heart rate,
Sentence
The sentence establishes, according to the lawyer, that, despite these alarm signals, both the gynecologist and the midwife acted negligently and did not take the necessary measures to solve the situation of loss of fetal well-being in order to finish the delivery and prevent irreversible fetal distress.
The first conviction was issued by a Ciudad Real Criminal Court in 2019, and was appealed by both the Castilla-La Mancha Health Service (Sescam), and its insurers.
This delayed the compensation for almost three years, until the Provincial Court sentenced the midwife, PAM, and the gynecologist, TAJ, as perpetrators of a crime of injury due to “less serious” professional negligence, and sentenced to a nine-month fine. at the rate of a daily fee of 10 euros.
Both Sescam and the insurers Mapfre and Zurich were sentenced as subsidiary civil liability and reached an agreement with the private prosecution to prevent the matter from reaching the Supreme Court.
The result is the largest compensation in the history of medical negligence in Spain: 2.6 million euros as principal compensation, plus 2.3 million in interest and capitalization of the annual pension, which together with the costs of the procedure , still to be assessed, will reach an amount of 5.2 million euros.
Such an unprecedented amount is achieved by assessing all the expenses that the family may incur, both past and future, for care, adaptation of the home and treatments.
Until Paula was six years old, she was attended by an early care center.
“But from that age on, the administration ignores it.
In Education they told us that it was the responsibility of Health, and there they did not provide that service, ”says Ascensión.
They asked for a physiotherapist at home to practice the breathing exercises that their daughter needs and that they had to pay for with her husband's only salary, 1,200 euros per month.
“We also didn't have anyone to help us, which can't be just anyone, since it's special care that requires sucking up the phlegm, which can happen once every four hours, if it's fine, but several times in a single hour if it's bad. worse;
administer her medication, feed her through the tube, ”says Ascensión.
Until now, the whole family has collaborated with this care, including the grandmother, who is 70 years old.
“She She can less and less, because it is very difficult to move her;
not only because she grows up, but because she has dislocated hips, malformations in the knees, hands, feet, back problems”, she continues.
The money that has already arrived will serve to pay for all this care.
"People see five million and it seems like a lot to them, but I would like the health of their children and that they take those five million."
Carmen Flores, who has advised the family from her association, believes that the money is very necessary, but asks that justice go further with this type of case: “There should be a disqualification coupled with compensation.
Whoever makes a mess like this has to receive a fair sanction.
I don't want to see a doctor in jail, but I do want him to never destroy another human life again."