Sir, – In today’s Ireland no woman seven weeks pregnant should die during surgery required following a pregnancy being diagnosed as ectopic. Expert medical intervention in a properly resourced maternity hospital should exclude any such possibility.
The death of Malak Thawley in the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street is a tragedy that should never have happened. While it was right that the hospital unreservedly apologised for what it referenced as "the shortcomings" in the care it provided, it is a pitifully inadequate response. Gross negligence appears to be a more accurate description, not mere "shortcomings", from what was learned from reports of the proceedings before the Coroner's Court.
Alan Thawley, who has lost his young wife, is seeking an independent inquiry. We know that the hospital has conducted what it has described as “a robust internal review”.
The review and its recommendations should be published and the independent inquiry sought should be agreed.
Alan Thawley deserves that as a minimum, without having to overcome bureaucratic obstacles or Government resistance.
The promise, some years hence, of a new co-located Maternity Hospital in the grounds of St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin will not answer Alan Thawley’s valid questions nor provide any assurances to any future patient who requires professional surgical intervention in similar distressing circumstances. – Yours, etc,
ALAN SHATTER,
Dublin 16.