A Brazilian doctor – charged with killing seven patients to free up beds at an intensive care unit – may have been responsible for as many as 300 deaths, a health ministry investigator has said.
Prosecutors said Dr Virginia Soares de Souza and her team administered muscle relaxants to patients, then reduced their oxygen supply, causing them to die of asphyxia at Evangelical Hospital in the southern city of Curitiba.
De Souza, a 56-year-old widow, was arrested last month and charged with seven counts of aggravated first degree murder. Three other doctors, three nurses and a physiotherapist have also been charged with murder.
Prosecutors for Parana state said wiretaps of De Souza’s phone conversations revealed that her motive was to free up beds for other patients.
“I want to clear the intensive care unit. It’s making me itch,” she said in one recording released to the media. “Unfortunately, our mission is to be go- betweens on the springboard to the next life,” she added.
De Souza’s lawyer, Elias Mattar Assad, said investigators had misunderstood how an intensive care unit works and she would prove her innocence.
More cases are expected to emerge as investigators comb through 1,700 medical records of patients who died in the last seven years at the hospital.
“We already have more than 20 cases established, and there are nearly 300 more that we are looking into,” chief investigator Dr Mario Lobato said.
If it is proven she killed 300 people, De Souza’s alleged toll would exceed that of Dr Harold Shipman, estimated to have killed at least 215 patients while working in Hyde, Greater Manchester.