Brazil's health ministry
says a doctor is suspected of killing seven terminally ill patients in a
southern Brazilian hospital.
A ministry press officer
says Virginia Helena Soares de Souza and seven assistants are suspected of
injecting the patients with "drug cocktails" and of tampering with
their respirators. The press officer declined to be identified because she was
not authorized to comment on the case.
Souza was arrested in
Curitiba last month but released on bail a week ago pending the outcome of the
investigation.
Prosecutors for the state of
Parana said wiretaps of De Souza's phone conversations revealed that her motive
was to free up hospital beds for other patients.
"I want to clear the
intensive care unit. It's making me itch," she said in one recording
released to Brazilian media. "Unfortunately, our mission is to be
go-betweens on the springboard to the next life," she added in the same
phone call.
De Souza's lawyer, Elias
Mattar Assad, said investigators had misunderstood how an intensive care unit
works and she would prove her innocence.
The press officer says the
Health Ministry is reviewing the medical records of 300 other patients that
were under de Souza's care. She did not provide details and did not say if they
had died.
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